The Deadline
A Novel About Project Management

 “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

About the Book

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.

Direct Order Links:

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Read the review by Patricia McQuaid

Early Praise:

“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.
                       — Bruce Taylor (Publisher, Imaging World Magazine)

Click to download the preface and chapter one and an interview with Tom DeMarco.

  

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Science Fiction, Comic Novels, and Short Stories by Tom DeMarco