The Mythical Man-Month
Posted in
Computers
Tags: engineering, fred brooks, the mythical man-month
It’s obvious that a woman can create a baby in 9 months, but 9 women cannot create a baby in 1 month. This is the idea which The Mythical Man-Month wants to explain. If a job can be done by 5 men in 1 month, it’s said that this job requires 5 man-months. So applying simple arithmetic, would this project be completed in half the time if 10 men work on it? In the software development world, this thought is an outright fallacy. It’s not possible to multiply people by hours. The cost of a project is proportional to the man/months, but the progress is not.
Sometimes, assigning more people to a project to speed up the development is not the best idea, due to the time required to explain, learn, understand, mets, … about the project. Also we can find non-divisible tasks, so only one person can to do it. If we want to reduce the time, the way to do this is not by adding developers but discarding functionalities not implemented yet. For example, in DSDM we have the time and the resources fixed and the functionalities are variable (they depends on the fixed stuff).
The Mythical Man-Month is a chapter of a book called The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering written by Fred Brooks. This book was written 32 years ago, and it’s been one of the most transcendental books about software project management. It was republished as an anniversary edition in 1995 with the essay No Silver Bullet, where the author maintains the idea that there isn’t single development, in either technology or in management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability or in simplicity. The main question is: Is it possible to develop without developers?
kotecinho
29 mar 2008 01:09:20
I would like to introduce an alternative theory, hipertextual man-month, is about a man who becomes hypertextual, send a big job indivisible, and the result of his work for a month is zero points…
DSDM logically would be a better work experience, but the reality is that the farm system is the most cost-effective and efficient for employers
good night friend
Miguel L. Romero
02 abr 2008 12:32:33
I really think that a job can be done (sometimes) faster if the people involved is efficient and productive. But most of the time, this particular theory (my personal point of view) applies for some sort of physical jobs, not intellectual ones…
So, technology, and the meaning of developing technology (software) requires a different kind of knowledge and understanding. So I do not agree with the main purpose of the theory, just like you wrote (regarding of course to the software developing and technology creation)…
And for the monkey man named Kotecinoh, did you become a farmer after that zero points experience? Because I'm seriously thinking quitting off everything and start a new sort of weird business (kidding)…
Greetings…
kotecinho
02 abr 2008 14:02:37
hello Miguel, I wanted to illustrate my initial discomfort taking advantage of this theory, but I think that I will be lucky and this will result in a positive situation for me, winning a lot of money and doing many gifts my wife…
not change the issue of the publication please, my answer is yes, it will be possible to develop without developers, every day the work of programmers is more mechanic, gaining importance to the role of the analysts.
bye friends