Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition) (ISBN 0932633439)

Relevant 20 years later:
I was surprised at how relevant this book still is more than 20 years after its initial publication. Depressingly, it seems the authors' suggestions have not been followed by many employers. I recently changed jobs and am in a cubicle for the first time. I have been struggling to think in my cubicle, and this book confirms my suspicion that it is my work space and not my brain that is causing the problem. Even when I am not being interrupted, I am always slightly on edge wondering when I will be interrupted. The down side of the book is that the solutions and suggestions for improvements are quite difficult to implement. I just finished the book tonight - I wonder if I will do anything differently tomorrow because of this book. Probably not - maybe the fun part of the book is grumbling about our common work situations.

People Matter:
Great book on managing people and their space in a technical environment. A must for technical managers.

Important Read For Contrarian Reasons:
Much of this book is spent explaining what should be obvious to the best managers, but which corporate culture and priorities tend to work against. In general, the book looks more at typical mistakes than at recipes for success. At the same time, the advice is solid and they often provide data to back up their assertions. If I was a manager at a typical and mediocre corporation, I would not recommend this book too much-- it is hell fighting against corporate culture. However if you work for the best or you are starting a business and want to be the best, this book is extremely important. (If you are a manager working at a mediocre corporation, start your own business or get hired by a better company after you read this book!) The main premise of the book is that people matter more than management or technology. Any business leader worth his salt knows these two points, yet most managers or leaders ignore them. This book helps give form to the ideals and specific guidance to get there. It is well recommended to everyone who manages software projects.

AF:
This book is not new, but still has a lot of good ideas and vision inside. Highly recommended!

A must for project managers:
It's hard to find at Amazon a book rated with deserved 5-stars. Even harder if it's got a good review by Joel Spolsky. Peopleware is one of them.Simple language, short chapters with plain ideas inside and a touch of psychology, altogether produces a confusing feeling. It seems as if the book tells you nothing you didn't already know but there is where its power lies: you end up thinking that you could have written this book. I've got the second edition which is splitted in six parts. The first one, it's a general and enjoyable review of what the hell managing people is and why it's so hard. After that, we're explained how our noisy office environment sometimes makes our productivity plummet. Don't worry! Low-cost solutions are also included. Next two chapters are both about people: how to hire the best and how to bring them up within productive jelled teams. Watch out, you must keep teamicide away from teams. It also talks us about CMM and what it calls "The Big M's", explaining its influence over creativity.Last but not least, this second edition adds several chapters dedicated to topics like chaos control, organization learning, process improvement...all of them from the corporation-level perspective. All that stuff just to conclude that people is the most valuable resource in any organization. This book doesn't taste like one of those stale books about business emotional intelligence ...it just shows plain concepts and applicable daily ideas. What turns this outstanding book into a classic is that its principles can be applied to almost any project or business (related to IT or not). My piece of advice would be "if you manage people, read this as soon as possible". So...bosses, Peopleware is waiting for you!