DeMarco and Lister have written an influential book Peopleware (now in
a second edition) that brings out a number of interesting insights
about the human dimension in IT projects. I would personally
recommend it to any developer or project manager.
One of their notions that strikes me as particularly valuable is that
of a "jelled" project team, meaning roughly a well-tuned attitude of
competitiveness, trust, and cooperation.
Larry Constantine has followed up their work with The Peopleware
Papers (Notes on the Human Side of Software), a collection of his
previously published columns.
More recent is "eXtreme Programming", an approach to software
development projects that emphasizes a variety of "human factors"
elements (in combination with other values) advocated by Kent Beck and
others.
If you like I can summarize some of the main points for considering
human factors alongside longer term business objectives (return on
investment) as a basis for measuring the success of IT projects, and
send it in the form of an answer.
regards, mathtalk-ga |
