Recently I started reading the book «The Deadline» by Tom de Marco, and I want to share my thoughts and opinions about the first and second chapter. This book was published in 1997 and it’s main inspiration is 1930’s Mr Tompkins in Wonderland by George Gamow. De Marco applied the same principle as the original novel, which was teaching physics by using a character that confronted important situations regarding laws of physics in a fictional universe. This time, the character is named the same, but the story focuses on a fictional world of Project Management lessons.
A quick summary of the first two chapters (SPOILERS): Tompkins is attending a seminar for people who are recently fired and preparing for finding a new job. He is a veteran project manager with plently of experience. He doesn’t seem to enjoy this seminar and passes most of his time asleep, but one evening a lady sits next to him. He discovers she is a secret agent of Morovia and kidnaps him using a modified version of his favorite coke. He now must help a government in a project management mission.
Still drugged and dreaming while traveling to Morovia, he sees a seminar given by Edgar Kalfbfuss, a young, unexperienced PM who only wants to see hard skills of the discipline. Tompkins confronts him and asks him: «Is that the whole agenda?» Kalbfuss, defensive, tells him that soft skills are easy to learn, and that is the reason he only covers those topics. Tompkins reminds him that human relations are just as important to successfully manage an organization, so his course should be named «Administrativa». He then wakes up and the dream was over.
In my opinion, Tompkins is right: if you don’t know how to motivate people, how to teach them to do their work right, how to build teamwork, your job will likely be very hard. It is a common area that people, specially software engineers, often give less importance. This story has now my attention, it has an interesting plot, and I’m looking forward to see what comes next in the next chapters. I will keep updating with new entries on this novel, so see you in the next one!
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