Brooks's Law

programming "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)