The Deadline A Novel About Project Management

"Here's a management book that 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 

From prolific and influential consultant and author Tom DeMarco comes a project management novel that vividly illustrates the principles -- and outright absurdities -- that affect the productivity of a software development team. 

With his trademark wit set free in the novel format, DeMarco centers his plot around Webster Tompkins, a division manager downsized from a giant telecommunications company, and subsequently given the opportunity to organize the entire software industry of an emerging (ex-Soviet block) country.   Opportunity, yes, but also something of a threat: this is a country whose past has given a fairly grim meaning to the term "deadline."  And of course Tomkins has a deadline.  And of course it's an impossible one. And not only that, but when he seems to be on the brink of actually bringing projects home on time, the deadline changes.  (This only happens in fiction.)

Under the gun,  Mr. Tompkins tests the project management principles he has gathered over a lifetime.   Each chapter closes with journal entries that make up the core of the eye-opening approach to management illustrated in this engaging novel.