Brooks's Law
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Brooks's Law
(programming)"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 O(N)
(that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and
communications cost associated with coordinating and then
merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the
square of N).
The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's 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.
The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's 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.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)