Slack

Finished reading Slack by Tom DeMarco tonight.  There is a reasonable review here .  The basic premise of the book  is that by building some slack into schedules, the projects are better — that innovation and improvements happen during the slack.  Basic premises include avoiding overtime, not doing ‘aggresive’ schedules, build trust for risks and mistakes, manage risks rather than ignoring or avoiding them, etc. Some of this was mentioned in Deadline which I thought was a much better book by Tom (in fact, that’s why I ended up reading this one).

Overall, I felt like this was a drive by shooting of contrarian management ideas.  The ideas are interesting, but he doesn’t flush out the ideas very far nor stick around long enough to do so.  It’s also fairly anecdotal rather than research based.  Nevertheless, it’s worth reading quickly (or reading a summary) 🙂