The Deadline

Tom DeMarco's now classic "novel about project management," The Deadline follows the curious adventure of software manager, Webster Tompkins, who finds himself invited to manage a huge new software factory in Morovia, an ex-Soviet satellite. Well, he isn't actually invited. What he is is kidnapped. The kidnapper is the lovely but not-too-principled Movian agent Lahksa Hoolihan. What Lahksa offers Webster is the chance to run the operation as a kind of management laboratory: he can run each project not just once, but half a dozen times with competing teams, organized along different principles to determine which of his hunches about project dynamics are on- and off-target. Mr. Tompkins brings in a number of software consultants (you're bound to recognize a few of them at least in spite of the author's attempt to conceal their identities). Get ready for the most entertaining lesson on management you've ever encountered.