The Mythical Man-Month

Brooks drew on running the OS/360 project at IBM and wrote the essays that gave the field Brooks's law, the observation that adding people to a late project makes it later. He explains why communication overhead grows faster than headcount, proposes the surgical team as a way of organising work around a small number of highly productive people, and warns about the second system effect that catches architects designing their second product. The anniversary edition adds the essay No Silver Bullet along with a chapter reviewing which of the original claims held up over twenty years. Written about software, and still the reference point whenever someone proposes to fix a schedule with more staff.