"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}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bazaar}{cathedral}{Mongolian Hordes technique}{second-system effect}]