2.7. Overcoming Brooks' Law
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The Book "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks was written in 1974 and
a second edition was released in 1995, which included four new chapters.
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The Book is considered a seminal work in the field of software engineering
and team management.
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It is basically a long list of problems a software project may encounter
with solutions proposed for them. (some good, some partial)
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Brooks' Law: adding more developers to a project increases the number
of interactions that have to exist between them, and so the output does
not increase linearly.
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As ESR notes, Gerald Weiberg observed that in shops where developers were not
territorial about their code, and encouraged others to look for bugs and
correct them, output was drastically better.
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That's why an open-source Bazaar-style project which is open for public
scrutiny can advance much faster than a completely closed Cathedral-style
project.
Written by Shlomi Fish