Brooks’ Law

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What Does Brooks’ Law Mean?

Brooks’ Law refers to a well-known software development principle coined by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. The law, “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later,” states that when a person is added to a project team, and the project is already late, the project time is longer, rather than shorter.

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Techopedia Explains Brooks’ Law

Brooks’ law may be applied for two key reasons:

  1. "Ramp up" time, which is required by new project members for productivity because of the complex nature of software projects are complex. This takes existing resources (personnel) away from active development and places them in training roles.
  2. An increase in staff drives communication overhead, including the number and variety of communication channels.
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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.