Tom DeMarco Quotations

The QSM Software Almanac is an invaluable resource. It establishes a norm for software projects, including best of class, worst of class and averages. In addition, it profiles the state of the art of software construction and enhancement. I wish I'd had this wonderful reference book years ago.

Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams even when they're secretly threatened by the whole concept.

The fundamental response to change is not logical, but emotional.

What we are looking for is managers who are awake enough to alter the world as they find it, to make it harmonize with what they and their people are trying to accomplish.

If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change.

Training is practice doing a new task much more slowly than an expert would do it.

Visual supervision is a joke for development workers. Visual supervision is for prisoners.

The pathology of setting a deadline to the earliest articulable date essentially guarantees that the schedule will be missed.

The manager's function is not to make people work, it is to make it possible for people to work.

The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment.