Author: Frederick P. Brooks

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Pub. in: August, 1995

ISBN: 0201835959

Pages: 322

Measurements: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BA00535

Other information: 1st edition

Fred Brooks wrote the original edition of this book about software development truths in 1975. What's so striking is how his assertions still hold true through all the apparent changes in how software is built, sold, and used. The title refers to Brooks' proven assertion that, for most projects, adding more people to a late software project will make it later. He has many others, including the famous "No Silver Bullet" article. In his 1995 update, he finds that most of his original claims are still true.

Don't be put off by all the examples about punched cards, assembly language, and IBM mainframes. Rather, look for ideas like requirements management, iterative development, and even hints of extreme programming ("surgical teams"). Brooks and others saw these things in 1975, while predicting that software development productivity had no chance of vast gains per decade parallel to hardware gains.

But Brooks hopes you read with optimism. The message is not that software development can't improve. Rather, that the essential part (not the mechanics of coding which has improved somewhat) is people creating machines (software) from pure thought. We can look for improvement methods in our ways of thinking, communicating, and working together.

If you have managed some software projects or have worked on some non-trivial software systems, undoubtedly you have faced many difficulties and challenges that you thought were unique to your circumstance. But after reading this book, you will realize that many of the things you experienced, and thought were unique problems, are NOT unique to you but are common systemic problems of developing non-trivial software systems. These problems appear repeatedly and even predictably, in project after project, in company after company, regardless of year, whether it's 1967 or 2007.

You will realize that long before maybe you were even born, other people working at places like IBM had already experienced those problems and quandries. And found working solutions to them which are as valid today as they were 30 years ago.
The suggestions in this book will help you think better and better manage yourself, and be more productive and less wasteful with your time and energy. In short, you will do more with less.

Some of Brooks insights and generalizations are:

The Mythical Man-Month:
Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule, may make it even more late.

The Second-System Effect:
The second system an engineer designs is the most bloated system she will EVER design.

Conceptual Integrity:
To retain conceptual integrity and thereby user-friendliness, a system must have a single architect (or a small system architecture team), completely separate from the implementation team.

The Manual:
The chief architect should produce detailed written specifications for the system in the form of the manual, which leaves no ambiguities about any part of the system and completely specifies the external spcifications of the system i.e. what the user sees.

Pilot Plant:
When designing a new kind of system, a team should factor in the fact that they will have to throw away the first system that is built since this first system will teach them how to build the system. The system will then be completely redesigned using the newly acquired insights during building of the first system. This second system will be smarter and should be the one delivered to the customer.

Formal Documents:
Every project manager must create a roadmap in the form of formal documents which specifies milestones precisely and things like who is going to do what and when and at what cost.

Communication:
In order to avoid disaster, all the teams working on a project, such as the architecture and implementation teams, should stay in contact with each other in as many ways as possible and not guess or assume anything about the other. Ask whenever there's a doubt. NEVER assume anything.

Code Freeze and System Versioning:
No customer ever fully knows what she wants from the system she wants you to build. As the system begins to come to life, and the customer interacts with it, he understands more and more what he really wants from the system and consequently asks for changes. These changes should of course be accomodated but only upto a certain date, after which the code is frozen. All requests for more changes will have to wait until the NEXT version of the system. If you keep making changes to the system endlessly, it may NEVER get finished.

Specialized Tools:
Every team should have a designated tool maker who makes tools for the entire team, instead of all individuals developing and using their private tools that no one else understands.

No silver bullet:
There is no single strategy, technique or trick that will exponentially raise the productivity of programmers.

(From quoting T. Harris and A. Imran, USA)

Target readers: Software developers, Software development project leaders and managers, Students of Computer Science and University teachers.

Better with Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. :

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