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Brook's law

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Brook's law

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." By Fred Brooks, author of "The Mythical Man-Month," published in 1975. The extra human communications required to add another member to a programming team is considerably more than anyone ever expects. It naturally depends on the experience and sophistication of the programmers involved and the quality of available documentation. Nevertheless, no matter how much experience they have, the additional time discussing the assignment, commitments and technical details as well as evaluating the results becomes exponential as more people are added. See laws.



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A corollary to Brook's Law might be: Compressing an already ambitious software project schedule can make it later.
To my mind, one of the central insights is Raymond's description of the hacker culture (hacker, not cracker) as a gift culture operating in a Lockean property space he calls the noosphere and how this cultural structure makes it possible for open-source projects to overcome Brook's Law.
 
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