Dorset.House.Peopleware.Productive.Projects.and.Teams

As we write these words, the first edition of Peopleware has

just passed its tenth anniversary.

I When the book came out all those years ago, we certainly

thought we were done, but time and our correspondence and e-mail

have convinced us otherwise. We seem to have been nominated

to serve as custodians of an international clearinghouse for peopleware-

related developments. Readers have written to us from

all corners of the earth to report on new kinds of teamicide,

attacks by the Furniture Police and counterattacks thereon, and all

sorts of managerial silliness about visual supervision, noise in the

workplace, and motivational schemes that demotivate. They have

also written to tell us of organizations where work is so much fan

that employees feel sheepish about cashing their paychecks, or

where project managers have succeeded in forming stable and

healthy little communities around the work.

We found, too, that we had much more to say on the subject.

Our own experience with peopleware matters continued to grow

through project consulting and work with client managers.

Slowly but surely, the giant, Holgar Dansk, began to stir again for

us. (You're going to have to read Chapter 26 to understand that.)

When the giant beckons, you ignore him at your peril. And so

evolved this second edition.

Rereading Peopleware with somewhat older eyes has shown

us something that wasn't so evident at the time of first publication: The book is not so much a collection of essays (that's what

we called it in the original Preface) as it is a book of stories.

Each of the principles we set out to describe has its story. There

is also a story in the way these principles affected us in our own

careers.

Not told in the original work is the story of Peopleware

itself: how the book was written and what impact it had on its

authors. Peopleware, a book about partnership, was written by a

partnership. It is a book about teams and was itself put together

by a team, including authors, editors, artists, and draft readers.

Most of all, the making of the book illustrated one of its most

essential themes: that owning part of a good work somehow feels

better than owning all of it. This may seem like an odd notion,

but if you've ever been part of a well-formed team or a harmonious

work group, you'll know what we mean.

For the second edition, we have added a Part VI and made

only a few, minor changes to the first five parts. We found only

one instance of a new work practice that forced us to revisit the

conclusions of the first edition. That change was the introduction

of voice-mail. In the original Chapter 11, we tried to persuade

you that interrupting yourself to answer the telephone in the mid^t

of a thought-intensive task was an exercise in frustration and lost

productivity. You seem to have agreed