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The Deadline (2014)

by Tom DeMarco is a real project management classic. I had bought it quite some time ago, but it collected dust on the shelf, despite the fact that I had enjoyed his book “Peopleware”.

Our protagonist, a project manager that recently lost his job because he spoke his mind, is drugged and kidnapped by a charming young woman who is “acquiring” talent for the up-and-coming software industry of Monrovia, a fictional country of the former Eastern Bloc. While many managers see a can-do attitude as a positive trait, it poses the danger of priming the team for averting to report risks and problems up the chain of command. In a very interesting early chapter the senior management of Monrovia’s budding new software industry explicitly model their “hunches” or gut feelings about how much of an effect training and personnel fluctuations have on the work being completed.

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