From book The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco
“A day lost at the beginning of a project hurts just as much as a day lost at the end.”
“Short bursts of pressure and even overtime may be a useful tactic as they focus people and increase the sense that the work is important, but extended pressure is always a mistake Perhaps managers make so much use of pressure because they don’t know what else to do, or are daunted by how difficult the alternatives are.”
“If you judge your performance based entirely on how well you run the projects that eventually do succeed, you get a false picture. You also have to watch how well you contain the failure rate, and how quickly you cut the failing efforts off. That is the biggest and hardest lesson I have ever learned.”