[Spambayes] Mythical Man-Month

[Wait, John]

Hi-


As introduction I work at Addison-Wesley, the publisher of Fred's wonderful
book.  I first read his first edition in 1981 and was very impressed with
it.


Several times since, when large software projects have arrived late on
schedule, people have told us to publish a follow up book documenting the
human, not programming challenges involved.


Last week at Tech Ed more than a few people told me to find someone on the
Vista team to write a book that would be roughly comparable to Fred's
wonderful book.  Aside from the challenge of having MS allow such a book,
what do you think of the idea of such a book?  Worthwhile or note?


I think Fred's book still has lots of mileage left.  But as you change
quite a few changes have impacted software development since the days that
book was first written.


Thanks,


John W. Wait


www.awprofessional.com <http://www.awprofessional.com/> 


617-848-6501


 


 


 


Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary
Edition, 2/E 


I finished reading
<http://www.aw-bc.com/catalog/academic/product/0,4096,0201835959,00.html>
Mythical Man Month (aka MMM) recently and quite honestly I was amazed at how
a book that was originally published in 1975 can be so on target with so man
aspects of software development.  Obviously not everything in the book is so
pertinent however his foresight is amazing.  The MMM is in a nutshell about
debunking the theory that if you add more people to a project then you can
speed the project up in a linear manner.  The book makes quite a bit of
sense.  When you add in communication factors, learning curves, and the
other items Brooks brings to light in the book you quickly see where he is
coming from.  Funny thing is the place we are in software development now
might also brings an additional factor to the table.  Offshoring brings even
more of a communication gap.  Both time zone gaps and language differences
come into play.  But I digress.  In truth, I think the book has survived
this long because Brooks focused more on the human aspect of development
than on the actual programming piece.  People don't change quite as rapidly
as software so it makes sense that the book would still be applicable in
today's environment.  People are still a limited and valuable resource and
it will probably remain that way.  (Moore's Law is there for machines but
not for people.)

For managers, I think the book is must read.  For everyone else, the book is
easy reading so if you have time I would recommend you read it.  The first
17 chapters of the anniversary edition are the most worthwhile.  I think the
other chapters are really him just defending himself against criticism and
not really as important to read (but hell that leaves only 3 chapters and
like I said it's easy reading).

 


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