1. Brookss Law "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is ON that is, proportional to N, but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is ON^2 that is, proportional to the square of N. The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBMs OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism. [Jargon File]
brookss law | brookside |
