Brooks's Law
 prov.

    ?Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later? ? a result of
    the fact that the expected advantage from splitting development 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 (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-2), an excellent
    early book on software engineering. 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
    (though it's not the whole story; see bazaar); too often, management
    still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.

Brooks's 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 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.

   [Jargon File]

   (1996-09-17)