Gerald M. Weinberg Quotes & Sayings

What you don't know may not hurt you, but what you don't remember always does. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Leadership is familiar, but not well understood. — Gerald M. Weinberg

If you don't have questions about a product's risks, then there's no reason to test. If you have at least one such question, then ask: Will these tests cost more to execute than their answers will be worth? — Gerald M. Weinberg

Denise: "So your present project is ready to pass to the testing people?" Ralph: "Absolutely." Denise: "Okay, since you're so sure it's adequately tested, I'm going to make you the following generous offer: If fewer than three bugs turn up in your component during testing, I will give you a raise. But if three or more bugs turn up during testing, you won't earn a raise this year." Ralph: "Um . . ." Denise: "Um what?" "Could I just have the component back for a few little tests I want to do? — Gerald M. Weinberg

Admiring remarks of my team as I track down the latest obscure but in the Project Mercury Monitor System. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Books are no substitute for experience working with people, so now that you've read this book on leadership, go out and interact with people before you read any more. — Gerald M. Weinberg

In this business, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. The — Gerald M. Weinberg

If you are a leader, the people are your work. There is no other work worth doing.* One — Gerald M. Weinberg

lack drama. Why is it that we reward programmers who work all night to remove the errors they put into their programs, or managers who make drastic organizational changes to resolve the crises their poor management has created? Why not reward the programmers who design so well that they don't have dramatic errors, and managers whose organizations stay out of crisis mode? Organizing — Gerald M. Weinberg

If you are a good leader, Who talks little, They will say, When your work is done, And your aim fulfilled, "We did it ourselves." - Lao Tse — Gerald M. Weinberg

PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces.
SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1.
NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring.
RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1. — Gerald M. Weinberg

In the popular image, a problem-solving leader is a solitary genius, but the true leader prefers to produce a success. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Jane easily shifts among activities - testing for discovery, pinpointing, locating, determining significance, repairing, troubleshooting, and testing to learn. As long as she continues to serve her customers, it doesn't really matter which task she performs at any given time. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Although technology often leads science in discovery, the philosophy of technology is usually drawn from the scientific philosophy of its time. In our time, the technology of machines has drawn its inspiration from mechanics, dealing with complexity by reducing the number of relevant parts. The technology of government, on the other hand, has drawn upon statistical mechanics, creating simplicity by dealing only with people in the structureless mass, as interchangeable units, and taking averages. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Effective leaders often have to act even when they don't understand all possible factors — Gerald M. Weinberg

Words are easy to change, but don't accomplish much. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Within IBM at that time, growing a beard without getting fired was an indisputable mark of technical genius. In — Gerald M. Weinberg

Problem-solving leaders have one thing in common: a faith that there's always a better way. — Gerald M. Weinberg

If your whole team consists of novice programmers, your expertise will give you considerable power; but if the other team members are also experts, they will attach less importance to your technical expertise. In that case, they'll pay more attention to organizational power, like the power to acquire extra hardware, to extend the schedule, or to capture a more interesting assignment. — Gerald M. Weinberg

There's never an easy answer to the question "Should we do more testing?" because information can guide risk reduction, but doesn't necessarily do so. — Gerald M. Weinberg

When is the 'look out the windshield phase' of driving? Pretty much all driving is looking out the windshield! It's not a phase. Saying 'testing takes too long' is a bit like saying 'safe driving takes too long. — Gerald M. Weinberg

If you cannot think of three ways of abusing a tool, you do not understand how to use it. Faithful — Gerald M. Weinberg

The best computer programmers never write a new program when they can use an old one for a new job. — Gerald M. Weinberg

In fact, the average programming manager would prefer that a project be estimated at twelve months and take twelve than that the same project be estimated at six months and take nine. This is an area where some psychological study could be rewarding, but there are indications from other situations that it is not the mean length of estimated time that annoys people but, rather, the standard deviation in the actual time taken. Thus, most people would prefer to wait a fixed ten minutes for the bus each morning than to wait one minute on four days and twenty-six minutes once a week-. Even though the average wait is six minutes in the second case, the derangement caused by one long and unexpected delay more than compensates for this disadvantage. If — Gerald M. Weinberg

People don't become leaders because they never fail. They become leaders because of the way they respond to failure. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Testing gathers information about a product; it does not fix things it finds that are wrong. — Gerald M. Weinberg

One of the hardest choices for technical stars who become leaders is losing touch with the latest in technology. — Gerald M. Weinberg

Separation of function is not to be despised, but neither should it be exalted. Separation is not an unbreakable law, but a convenience for overcoming inadequate human abilities, whether in science or engineering. As D'Arcy Thompson, one of the spiritual fathers of the general systems movement, said: As we analyze a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divided the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teaching of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgement and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral.10 The — Gerald M. Weinberg

Or, suppose you want to motivate your managers to ship products on time, so you conspicuously promote each manager whose product goes out the door on schedule. All goes as planned until the situation arises in which one of your managers has a project where the testers are reporting numerous problems. Because managers who have shipped products on time have been promoted, this manager thinks, I want that promotion so I need to ship this on time, but those bug reports are getting in the way. I know what I'll do! I'll put the testers on another project until the developers have a chance to catch up. — Gerald M. Weinberg