This is probably first book I read about management particularly in software industry. Book provides couple of very interesting ideas, that can help software projects succeed. It states, that most of the problems in projects are not related to technology, they have sociological nature. So next time you hear about some troubles within your project, that something cannot be done, or can be done but requires enormous amount of time, or that someone cannot be in time with some tasks ASK YOURSELF questions: Are you sure that each team member feels that he is part of the team? Does everyone feel himself responsible for the work he is doing? Is he/she interested in work? Does environment surrounding employee facilitate him?

Indeed, do you remember days when you were distracted too many times per day by stupid not important things and in the end of such day you weren’t able to remember what you had done? I remember when one of my team-mates complained about such situation to SM. What do you think was the response? – That it is all about time management. I would say “Yes and No”. Some workaholics hide their real efforts under what they call “time management”, but there are people who want to work only 8 hours per day and then be back at home with their family. So in their case couple of distractions per day can lead to low performance. Book gives some technics on how to decrease such situations and also how you can build team which will find their own ways to distill their work and remove all not necessary things.

In book I found one way-way too interesting experimental activity to crystallize your teams. So authors propose organizing competitions on weekend for teams (4 members) working on small project (2 people-months). During the competition you as project manager should serve them. Get them out to some extraordinary restaurant at 2 am, yeah at night! Do something that will make them feel your care. In the end there should be lot of winners in different nominations.

This was expensive experiment, but book also proposes other expensive events like flying with whole teams to other countries on the company day for example. I heard about such entertainments at least in two Lviv’s companies. They are now proud of that.

Have you ever heard about black testers team dressing black clothes and making all developers scared, because they will definitely find tonnes of bugs in their programs? No? Except of this there a lot of very interesting examples of how something can be self-organized to reach highest performance and results without managers boring decrees.

Book will bring to the table a lot of interesting facts and ideas about Peopleware. And I would highly recommend to read it to have better understanding of what really has impact on your team progress.