Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

How can you keep from getting sick by infection? You need to build up immunity. There are two ways to do this. One is by surviving an earlier bout with the disease, and the other is by getting vaccinated. Reading this book will "vaccinate" you against the negative project behaviors it describes, so that they can be recognized and dealt with before they cause project failures. Learning from the failures of others is a lot faster and cheaper than learning "the hard way" (by taking part in failed projects yourself). Get everyone on your team a copy, so that the cries of alarm cannot fail to be heard.

With "Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior," The Atlantic Systems Guild team of DeMarco, Lister et al has done it again - a book about projects, project work and software development that is both useful and readable. I highly recommend this book. Many books that relate to technical or managerial subjects are difficult to read - a lot of stuff you don't care about, and the occasional nugget. "Adrenaline Junkies" is a book of nuggets. Each chapter is a nugget or "pattern," including a phrase, a picture, a sentence and a couple of pages of descriptive text. One of my favorites, "News Improvement," refers to the tendency of bad news to be "improved" as it makes its way up the organizational chain. Another, "The Overtime Predictor," talks about how fear can drive people to overtime. Not everyone will care about every pattern, but the book is organized in such a way that the reader has control over what to miss. Some patterns validated my own experiences. Some provided new insights. A couple I didn't get. My recommendation: read through the book, paying special attention to the patterns you care about. Skip some of the descriptive text if the pattern doesn't resonate with you, but first make sure you understand it. (Hint: the last paragraph of each pattern usually has a brief summary.) Then, when you're done, take a few minutes and go through all the patterns again to refresh your mind. That way, when you encounter these situations in real life, you'll remember the pattern. Even if that's all you can remember, you'll be able to refer back to the book for advice.

God, what a great read! Serious topics, but plenty of humor to take the edge off. As usual, this team of folks have got it right. For everyone in the software development arena, this is a must read!

I love this book. These guys must have been spying on my office for the past 20 years. Most of the bad things that happen where I work (and a few of the good things) are in this book. They truly are patterns of project behavior. The book includes 86 project patterns. Each has a title, a one sentence summary, two or three pages of text, and a great illustration or photo. The first pattern is "Adrenaline Junkies" - the place I worked in 1986 where every thing is urgent and must be started now and no one eats or sleeps until it is done. The last pattern "Template Zombies" - the place I worked in 1996 where every thing is a template that must be filled without any thought. Working complex projects without any thought - not a good idea. Flip through this book. Find a pattern - either good or bad - that fits your current project, bring the book to work and show people that your workplace is not unique, that others have done the same before, and what the result will probably be if you don't change.