brooks's law

2 definitions found

brooks's law - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  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)
  

brooks's law - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  Brooks's Law
   prov.
  
     "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" -- a
     result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting
     development 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
     (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-2), an excellent early book
  on
     software engineering. 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
     (though it's not the whole story; see bazaar); too often,
     management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect
     , optimism.