The Mythical Man-Month

created by Harry

(idea) by ggould (7.9 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Sat Nov 13 1999 at 9:00:14

The notion, common among people too many abstraction barriers away from real humans, that productivity is a meaningful quantity.

"If one woman can have a baby in nine months, nine women could have a baby in one month!"

The title and subject of a book by Fred Brooks, often referred to as TMMM, which inspires nearly religious reverence among many computer types.

(thing) by TallRoo (3.3 wk) (print) ? (I like it!) Wed Aug 02 2000 at 16:09:19

One of the most respected books on the subject of Software Engineering. Frederick P. Brooks Jr. worked for IBM, as a project manager for System/390 and OS/360.
The front cover has a picture of some bears and other wildlife, entitled "Mural of La Brea Tar Pits". (Chapter 1 is an essay entitled, The Tar Pit)

ISBN: 0-201-00650-2
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
First written 1975, Reprinted Jan 1982.

(thing) by Dhericean (2.3 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Mon Aug 14 2000 at 14:41:31

A seminal book about structuring and managing large software projects subtitled "Essays on Software Engineering". Written by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. Project manager for the development of the Operating System/360 for IBM. It was published in 1975 and still has much that is relevant even in current development environments. To a great extent this is the foundation upon which all later software development methodologies are based.

The Mythical Man-Month of the title refers to the spurious belief amongst some non-programming managers (PHB) that if it takes a programmer six-months to develop a module then six programmers could do the job in one month.

Having looked at Brian Feldman's node below I realise I have to get a new copy as mine only has 15 chapters. I guess it is looking a little dog-eared.

printable version
chaos

Mongolian hordes programming	naive perceptions about software development	Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall	The Original GNU Announcement
debugging is an imperfect science, fraught with anxiety	640K Barrier	Hackworth IMAX Dome	How amelinda retroactively changed early Judaic lore
second-system effect	Sexual position	Magic bullet	Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" Speech
cuddle	Fred Brooks	Tower of Babel effect	Knights Templar
i740	Brooks's Law	1 + 1 does not equal 2	The shortest hour known to man
Using Red Hat and it feels so good	The three golden rules of user interface design	Ralph Ellison	Tower of Babel

Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.

Login
Password

remember me
password reminder
register

Everything2 Help

Look at this mess the Death Borg made!
Vibrator
Cyclic Redundancy Check
Virginia Woolf
The Capuchin Boneyard
incarnadine
Bovine Selective Visual Impairment
Dylan and the Dead
Bedazzled
Coase Theorem
Charles Dickens
Empedocles
Bullfighting
Buying an electric guitar

jessicaj
July 26, 2008	(dream)
Berek
ABBA	(person)
devolution
k-hole	(place)
Nadine_2
The Sound Of Madness	(review)
Twin Eclipse
Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue	(idea)
SwimmingMonkey
Conversations with Fo Fo- the Loneliest dog in Purgatory	(fiction)
locke baron
lynx	(thing)
Simulacron3
Reality, Dimensions and the Natural Ontology	(essay)
SubSane
Making Love to a 9-Foot Woman	(person)
Ouzo
Thoughts	(idea)
antigravpussy
I fall silent, listening. The breadcrumbs are talking about us	(person)
calgon
Buffalo Bill by the pool	(poetry)
gate
Anarchy is Order	(idea)
ushdfgakjasgh
Scribeling	(thing)
XWiz
Trism	(review)

E2 is a by-product of the existence of The Everything Development Company