Difference between revisions of "The Mythical Man-Month"
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Latest revision as of 20:53, 25 April 2016
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".
This idea is known as Brooks' law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping.
Summary
Brooks' observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360.
He had added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, a decision that he would later conclude had, counter-intuitively, delayed the project even further.
He also made the mistake of asserting that one project -- writing an ALGOL compiler -- would require six months, regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer).
The book is widely regarded as a classic on the human elements of software engineering.
