DeMarco, Tom : Atlantic Systems Guild

Tom DeMarco is a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild, a computer systems think tank with offices in the U.S. and Great Britain. He was the winner of the 1986 Warnier Prize for "lifetime contribution to the field of computing."

Mr. DeMarco's career began at Bell Telephone Laboratories where he served as part of the now-legendary ESS-1 project. In later years, he managed real-time projects for La CEGOS Informatique in France, and was responsible for distributed on-line banking systems installed in Sweden, Holland, France and Finland. He has lectured and consulted throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and the Far East.

Mr. DeMarco has a BSEE degree from Cornell University, an M.S. from Columbia University and a diplome from the University of Paris at the Sorbonne. In his spare time, he is an Emergency Medical Technician, certified by his home state and by the National Registry of EMTs, and a founding member of The Penobscot Compact, a business-education partnership operating under the auspices of the Maine State Aspirations Program. He makes his home in Camden, Maine.

"The Deadline is dead on. It is a must-read, fun-read for anyone who has ever been, or will ever be, involved in a software project. Tom DeMarco has packaged the collective wisdom and hard-fought lessons learned of leading software prophets, gurus, and oracles into this tantalizing, insightful, and flat-out entertaining 'novel.'"

-- Will Tracz, ACM Software Engineering Notes

"A humorous, fictionalized look at software development . . . offers a balanced approach to project management. The author rightly pinpoints people as the essential foundation of all successful projects."

-- Quality Digest

"Here's a management book which is just plain fun to read. The Deadline is an innovative and entertaining story with insightful business principles for team-based project management at the end of each chapter."

-- John Sculley

". . . it's a technological tour de force. It covers a wide range of topics, from project estimating to metrics, from conflict resolution to dealing with ambiguous specifications. . . . the bullet points alone are worth the price of the book. . . . The Deadline is almost as funny as a book full of Dilbert cartoons, but it's far less cynical. More important, it contains some profound wisdom, and some practical, positive advice for improving the chances of meeting your next project deadline. I highly recommend it."

-- Ed Yourdon, American Programmer, September 1997

"When people set out to impart the kind of common sense that is all too often missing in the software business, they generally sound preachy and smug. Tom has avoided this pitfall through the artful use of stories. He has also tied in enough conflict and tension to get the reader's interest. All in all, this is a relaxing and informative read."

-- Watts S. Humphrey

"Tom DeMarco once again gleefully peels away the onion layers of management issues with a humanity and insight that translate as easily into corporate general management as they do into the management of of software projects and teams. In The Deadline, he gives us a chuckle of a book, rich with both the absurdities of our daily work lives and with metric devices that can help us manage and perform better. It's the Function Points, stupid!"

-- Bruce Taylor, Founding Publisher Imaging World Magazine

Dorset House Web Site, March 2000

During the 1930's, the University of Colorado physicist George Gamow began writing a series of short stories about a certain Mr. Tompkins, a middle-aged bank clerk. Mr. Tompkins, the stories related, was interested in modern science. He would trundle off to evening lectures put on by a local university physics professor, and inevitably fall asleep partway through. When he awoke, he would find himself in some alternate universe where one or another of the basic physical constants was strikingly changed.

In one of these stories, for example, Mr. T. awoke in a universe where the speed of light was only fifteen miles per hour. That meant he could observe relativistic effects on his bicycle : The city blocks became shorter in the direction of travel as he accelerated, and time on the post office clock slowed down. In another story, Mr. Tompkins visited a world where Planck's Constant was 1.0, and there he could see quantum mechanics in action on a billiard table : The billiard balls refused to move smoothly across the table, but took up quantum positions in probabilistic fashion.

When I first came across the Gamow stories, I was just a teenager. Like Mr. Tompkins, I too had an interest in modern science. I had already read numerous descriptions of relativity and quantum mechanics, but it was only when I read Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland that I began to develop a visceral sense of what these matters were all about.

I have always admired Gamow's ingenious pedagogical device. It occurred to me that a similar device might be used to demonstrate some of the principles of project management. All I'd have to do is portray a veteran project manager sent off to some Wonderland where various of the rules governing project work could be instructively altered. Thus was born, with apologies to George Gamow, the idea of The Deadline, the story of a manager named Tompkins and his remarkable experiences running software projects in the ex-Soviet Republic of Morovia.

From prolific and influential consultant and author Tom DeMarco comes a project management novel that vividly illustrates the principles -- and the outright absurdities -- that affect the productivity of a software development team.

With his trademark wit set free in the novel format, DeMarco centers the plot around the development of six software products. Mr. Tompkins, a manager downsized from a giant telecommunications company, divides the huge staff of developers at his disposal into eighteen teams -- three for each of the products. The teams are of different sizes and use different methods, and they compete against each other . . . and against an impossible deadline.

With these teams, and with the help of numerous consultants who come to his aid, Mr. Tompkins tests the project management principles he has gathered over a lifetime. Key chapters end with journal entries that form the core of the eye-opening approaches to management illustrated in this entertaining novel.

Preface

1. Opportunity Knocking
2. Standing Up to Kalbfuss
3. Silikon Valejit
4. The CD-ROM Plant
5. NNL
6. The World's Greatest Project Manager
7. Taking On Staff
8. The Eminent Dr. Rizzoli
9. Ex-General Markov
10. Abdul Jamid
11. The Sinister Minister Belok
12. The Numbers Man
13. QuickerStill
14. Morovia's First Programmer
15. Think Fast!
16. Planning for the Summer Games
17. The Guru of Conflict Resolution
18. Maestro Diyeniar
19. Part and Whole
20. Standing on Ceremony
21. Endgame Begins
22. The Year's Hottest IPO
23. Passing Through Riga on the Way Home