p.5 The real task of software development management is to marshal as much intellect as possible and invest
it in the activities that support the creation of the product... the only remaining element that really counts is whether
the team is fully engaged intellectually.
p.30-32 Someone once asked me, "What's the hardest thing about software development?" I didn't hesitate.
"Getting people to think." Believe it or not, most people don't want to think. They think they want to think, but
they don't... The clearest sign that people are thinking is that they listen to other people's ideas and
critical feedback... Thinking people can evaluate in the purest possible way all incoming insights.
p.36,38 From time immemorial, whenever significant groups of people have been on a dangerous journey, they
have sent scouts forward to check out the future... There is no end to the utility of scouts... The basic idea,
one I'll come at from several directions in this book, is not to slow the pace of change, or to create more
stability; but to get good at change, at managing technology in motion... Movement holds more potential
for adaption and self-actualization than rigidity. Scouts are used only by a people that are under way, in motion,
migrating. If you are standing still, you don't need scouts.
p.48 The only authority stems from knowledge, not position.
p.55 What is legitimate authority? Knowing what you're doing, communicating what you're doing, and expecting
the team to add value to your behavior and ideas.
p.99-101 It is essential not to profess to know, or even seem to know, or to accept that
someone else knows, that which is unknown. Almost without exception, the things that end up coming
back to haunt you are the things you pretended to understand early on but didn't... Bear down on the team until they
realize that they haven't comprehensively assessed the unknowns... Your job is to make uncertainty an unshakable fact,
and then to coerce the reshaping of the organization to cope with the uncertain situation.
p.101 the people who work with me get more points for not knowing something, and for knowing that they don't
know it, than they do for knowing something. I'd rather know what the unknowns are. I want to know what is going to
get me. The people I work for would rather know that too.
p.102 You have to manage the granularity of development tasks in such a way that you emerge with visible
deliverables over short intervals.
p.111 The product must be made visible. You have to see what you are doing.
p.144 Change is pregnant with opportunity... Flexibility is about reaching, stretching, and adapting
in a natural progression... The changes you should accept or make are those that tend to optimize patterns already
established, changes that move in the direction of simplicity and efficiency, not the ones that introduce new layers of complication.
p.145 Great software appears to have been created by a single great mind.
p.169 What you need for truly creative change, then, is an environment that transcends good health, an environment
that not only accepts a continuum of change, which is normal, but one that positively engenders, nurtures, and propels forward
wholly new dynamics. The transcendent organization values radical or revolutionary change and esteems utterly new modes of
thought. It's possible for a team to be healthy and not especially creative, but this state of affairs is not especially desirable.
What is desirable is team fecundity, the radiating of the new and the original from the normal and the healthy. This
kind of creativity requires a flexibility and a courage beyond the reach of most of us most of the time.
p.172 It can pay huge dividends to rethink things anew. Innovation starts with you.
