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A review by _mac_
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
It's hard to believe this book is 20+ years old. It feels like it had been written with today's companies in mind (something that is as much an endorsement of the Author's wisdom as it is a condemnation of how slow and ineffective organisations are in changing their ways).
One of the great things about this book is that it expresses a lot of concepts that got eventually popularised under the label "lean management", but - due to it having been written before "lean" was on everybody's lips - it does with its own unique language, so the reader is never tempted to say "I know what this is about" and skip ahead.
It is also just about the perfect density. Many management books ought to be a blog post instead, and they go on and one for pages repeating the same thing with different words, just because the author wanted to be able to say they published a book. This one is not. There is no page that I found superfluous and/or a repetition of anything that was already said.
Finally, Tom DeMarco can write. The vocabulary is richer than the typical business book, the prose crispier, the imagery stronger.
One of the great things about this book is that it expresses a lot of concepts that got eventually popularised under the label "lean management", but - due to it having been written before "lean" was on everybody's lips - it does with its own unique language, so the reader is never tempted to say "I know what this is about" and skip ahead.
It is also just about the perfect density. Many management books ought to be a blog post instead, and they go on and one for pages repeating the same thing with different words, just because the author wanted to be able to say they published a book. This one is not. There is no page that I found superfluous and/or a repetition of anything that was already said.
Finally, Tom DeMarco can write. The vocabulary is richer than the typical business book, the prose crispier, the imagery stronger.