The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Few books on software project management have been as influential as this timeless classic. Frederick Brooks draws from his experience as project manager for IBM's System/360 family of computers to reveal fundamental truths about software engineering. His central thesis — that adding manpower to a late software project makes it later — has become a cornerstone of software management. These essays remain as relevant today as when first published.
Key Ideas
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
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Notable Quotes
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination.
A program is not a product. A program becomes a product when it can be run, tested, repaired, and extended by anybody.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.
The first false assumption that underlies the scheduling of systems programming is that all will go well — that each task will take only as long as it 'ought' to take.
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