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Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as  The Mythical Man-Month . With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in  The Mythical Man-Month:  that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

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The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition, Edition 2

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The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

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About the author

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., was born in 1931 in Durham, NC. He received an A.B. summa cum laude in physics from Duke and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, under Howard Aiken, the inventor of the early Harvard computers.

At Chapel Hill, Dr. Brooks founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired it from 1964 through 1984. He has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. His current teaching and research is in computer architecture, molecular graphics, and virtual environments.

He joined IBM, working in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, 1956-1965. He is best known as the "father of the IBM System/360", having served as project manager for its development and later as manager of the Operating System/360 software project during its design phase. For this work he, Bob Evans, and Erick Block were awarded and received a National Medal of Technology in 1985.

Dr. Brooks and Dura Sweeney in 1957 patented a Stretch interrupt system for the IBM Stretch computer that introduced most features of today's interrupt systems. He coined the term computer architecture . His System/360 team first achieved strict compatibility, upward and downward, in a computer family. His early concern for word processing led to his selection of the 8-bit byte and the lowercase alphabet for the System/360, engineering of many new 8-bit input/output devices, and providing a character-string datatype in PL/I.

In 1964 he founded the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. Currently, he is Kenan Professor of Computer Science . His principal research is in real-time, three-dimensional, computer graphics-"virtual reality." His research has helped biochemists solve the structure of complex molecules and enabled architects to "walk through" buildings still being designed. He is pioneering the use of force display to supplement visual graphics.

Brooks distilled the successes and failures of the development of Operating System/360 in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays in Software Engineering , (1975). He further examined software engineering in his well-known 1986 paper, "No Silver Bullet." He is just completing a two-volume research monograph, Computer Architecture , with Professor Gerrit Blaauw. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice within The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition .

Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Computer Society's McDowell and Computer Pioneer Awards, the ACM Allen Newell and Distinguished Service Awards, the AFIPS Harry Goode Award, and an honorary Doctor of Technical Science from ETH-Zürich.

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The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Frederick p. brooks jr..

The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

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Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity.

By documenting a design, the designer exposes himself to the criticisms of everyone, and he must be able to defend everything he writes. If the organizational structure is threatening in any way, nothing is going to be documented until it is completely defensible.

All repairs tend to destroy the structure, to increase the entropy and disorder of the system. Less and less effort is spent on fixing original design flaws; more and more is spent on fixing flaws introduced by earlier fixes. As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing ceases to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress.

Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilege of earning one's bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free, for passion. I am very thankful.

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Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition Paperback – 15 Aug. 1995

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Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month . With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

• ISBN-10 9780201835953
• ISBN-13 978-0201835953
• Edition 2nd
• Publisher Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date 15 Aug. 1995
• Language English
• Dimensions 23.04 x 15.52 x 1.91 cm
• Print length 336 pages
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From the back cover, about the author.

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., was born in 1931 in Durham, NC. He received an A.B. summa cum laude in physics from Duke and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, under Howard Aiken, the inventor of the early Harvard computers.

At Chapel Hill, Dr. Brooks founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired it from 1964 through 1984. He has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. His current teaching and research is in computer architecture, molecular graphics, and virtual environments.

He joined IBM, working in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, 1956-1965. He is best known as the "father of the IBM System/360", having served as project manager for its development and later as manager of the Operating System/360 software project during its design phase. For this work he, Bob Evans, and Erick Block were awarded and received a National Medal of Technology in 1985.

Dr. Brooks and Dura Sweeney in 1957 patented a Stretch interrupt system for the IBM Stretch computer that introduced most features of today's interrupt systems. He coined the term computer architecture . His System/360 team first achieved strict compatibility, upward and downward, in a computer family. His early concern for word processing led to his selection of the 8-bit byte and the lowercase alphabet for the System/360, engineering of many new 8-bit input/output devices, and providing a character-string datatype in PL/I.

In 1964 he founded the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. Currently, he is Kenan Professor of Computer Science . His principal research is in real-time, three-dimensional, computer graphics-"virtual reality." His research has helped biochemists solve the structure of complex molecules and enabled architects to "walk through" buildings still being designed. He is pioneering the use of force display to supplement visual graphics.

Brooks distilled the successes and failures of the development of Operating System/360 in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays in Software Engineering , (1975). He further examined software engineering in his well-known 1986 paper, "No Silver Bullet." He is just completing a two-volume research monograph, Computer Architecture , with Professor Gerrit Blaauw. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice within The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition .

Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Computer Society's McDowell and Computer Pioneer Awards, the ACM Allen Newell and Distinguished Service Awards, the AFIPS Harry Goode Award, and an honorary Doctor of Technical Science from ETH-Zürich.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0201835959
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Professional; 2nd edition (15 Aug. 1995)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780201835953
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0201835953
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 23.04 x 15.52 x 1.91 cm
• 1 in Computer Databases (Books)
• 5 in Amazon Online Shopping

About the author

Frederick p. brooks, jr..

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an architect of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. He was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware and the decision to switch computer byte size from 6 to 8 bits. He then managed the initial development of the Operating System/360 software suite: operating system, 16 compilers, communications, and utilities.

He founded the UNC Department of Computer Science in 1964 and chaired it for 20 years. His research there has been in computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics (protein visualization graphics and "virtual reality"). His best-known books are The Mythical Man-Month (1975, 1995); Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution (with G.A. Blaauw, 1997); and The Design of Design (2010).

Dr. Brooks has received the National Medal of Technology, the A.M. Turing award of the ACM, the Bower Award and Prize of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the IEEE, and others. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering and of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He became a Christian at age 31 and has taught an adult Sunday school class for 35 years. He chaired the Executive Committee for the 1973 Research Triangle Billy Graham Crusade. He and Mrs. Nancy Greenwood Brooks are faculty advisors to a graduate student chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They have three children and nine grandchildren.

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Chapter 2. The Mythical Man-Month

Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you. — MENU OF RESTAURANT ANTOINE, NEW ORLEANS

More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined. Why is this cause of disaster so common?

First, our techniques of estimating are poorly developed. More seriously, they reflect an unvoiced assumption which is quite untrue, i.e., that all will go well.

Second, our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable.

Third, because we are uncertain of ...

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Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition

• By Frederick P. Brooks
• Published Aug 2, 1995 by Addison-Wesley Professional .

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• Copyright 1996
• Dimensions: 6-1/8" x 9-3/16"
• Edition: 2nd
• ISBN-10: 0-201-83595-9
• ISBN-13: 978-0-201-83595-3

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month . With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time. The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

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Table of Contents

 1. The Tar Pit.  2. The Mythical Man-Month.  3. The Surgical Team.  4. Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design.  5. The Second-System Effect.  6. Passing the Word.  7. Why Did the Tower of Babel Fail?  8. Calling the Shot.  9. Ten Pounds in a Five-Pound Sack. 10. The Documentary Hypothesis. 11. Plan to Throw One Away. 12. Sharp Tools. 13. The Whole and the Parts. 14. Hatching a Castrophe. 15. The Other Face. 16. No Silver Bullet -- Essence and Accident. 17. "No Silver Bullet" ReFired. 18. Propositions of The Mythical Man-Month: True or False? 19. The Mythical Man-Month After 20 Years. Epilogue. Notes and references. Index. 0201835959T04062001

To my surprise and delight, The Mythical Man-Month continues to be popular after twenty years. Over 250,000 copies are in print. People often ask which of the opinions and recommendations set forth in 1975 I still hold, and which have changed, and how. Whereas I have from time to time addressed that question in lectures, I have long wanted to essay it in writing. Peter Gordon, now a Publishing Partner at Addison-Wesley, has been working with me patiently and helpfully since 1980. He proposed that we prepare an Anniversary Edition. We decided not to revise the original, but to reprint it untouched (except for trivial corrections) and to augment it with more current thoughts. Chapter 16 reprints "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," a 1986 IFIPS paper that grew out of my experience chairing a Defense Science Board study on military software. My co-authors of that study, and our executive secretary, Robert L. Patrick, were invaluable in bringing me back into touch with real-world large software projects. The paper was reprinted in 1987 in the IEEE Computer magazine, which gave it wide circulation. "No Silver Bullet" proved provocative. It predicted that a decade would not see any programming technique which would by itself bring an order-of-magnitude improvement in software productivity. The decade has a year to run; my prediction seems safe. "NSB" has stimulated more and more spirited discussion in the literature than has The Mythical Man-Month . Chapter 17, therefore, comments on some of the published critique and updates the opinions set forth in 1986. In preparing my retrospective and update of The Mythical Man-Month , I was struck by how few of the propositions asserted in it have been critiqued, proven, or disproven by ongoing software engineering research and experience. It proved useful to me now to catalog those propositions in raw form, stripped of supporting arguments and data. In hopes that these bald statements will invite arguments and facts to prove, disprove, update, or refine those propositions, I have included this outline as Chapter 18. Chapter 19 is the updating essay itself. The reader should be warned that the new opinions are not nearly so well informed by experience in the trenches as the original book was. I have been at work in a university, not industry, and on small-scale projects, not large ones. Since 1986, I have only taught software engineering, not done research in it at all. My research has rather been on virtual reality and its applications. In preparing this retrospective, I have sought the current views of friends who are indeed at work in software engineering. For a wonderful willingness to share views, to comment thoughtfully on drafts, and to re-educate me, I am indebted to Barry Boehm, Ken Brooks, Dick Case, James Coggins, Tom DeMarco, Jim McCarthy, David Parnas, Earl Wheeler, and Edward Yourdon. Fay Ward has superbly handled the technical production of the new chapters. I thank Gordon Bell, Bruce Buchanan, Rick Hayes-Roth, my colleagues on the Defense Science Board Task Force on Military Software, and, most especially, David Parnas for their insights and stimulating ideas for, and Rebekah Bierly for technical production of, the paper printed here as Chapter 16. Analyzing the software problem into the categories of essence and accident was inspired by Nancy Greenwood Brooks, who used such analysis in a paper on Suzuki violin pedagogy. Addison-Wesley's house custom did not permit me to acknowledge in the 1975 Preface the key roles played by their staff. Two persons' contributions should be especially cited: Norman Stanton, then Executive Editor, and Herbert Boes, then Art Director. Boes developed the elegant style, which one reviewer especially cited: "wide margins, and imaginative use of typeface and layout." More important, he also made the crucial recommendation that every chapter have an opening picture. (I had only the Tar Pit and Rheims Cathedral at the time.) Finding the pictures occasioned an extra year's work for me, but I am eternally grateful for the counsel. Deo soli gloria or Soli Deo Gloria -- To God alone be the glory. Chapel Hill, N.C., F. 0201835959P04062001

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By Dustin Marx , JavaWorld |

A software developer's public collection of tips and tricks, real-world solutions, and industry commentary related to Java programming.

Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr .'s The Mythical Man-Month (MM-M) is one of the most famous books in all of software development literature and is arguably THE most famous book on software development management. There are already innumerable reviews of this class, but I review it again in this post for those software developers who have not read it and want a small overview of what's to like about it. After all, it is PC World 's #1 title in the list of Top Ten IT Books Never To Admit You Haven't Read . The full title of the edition I am reviewing in this post is The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition .

The "Anniversary Edition" of The Mythical Man-Month (published in 1995) adds significant content above and beyond what was published in the original edition in 1975. The "Anniversary Edition" contains the original book in its original form (albeit with the inclusion of corrections added in the 1982 reprint) and adds four new chapters. The first fifteen chapters in the Anniversary Edition are the chapters from the original book. The added chapters include Brooks's separate but equally famous IFIPS ( 1986 ) / IEEE Computer Magazine ( 1987 ) paper No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering and a follow-up called No Silver Bullet ReFired . Chapters 18 and 19 of the Anniversary Edition focus on Brooks's 1995 self-perspective on what he wrote in 1975. Brooks points out what he got wrong and what he got right (there are far more cases of the latter than the former).

There are numerous reviews of The Mythical Man-Month that include exhaustive coverage of the topics and quotes from this book ( Wikipedia article , Bernard I. Ng' s The Mythical Man-Month summary , Some insights from The Mythical Man Month starting from Chapter 11 , The Mythical Man-Month – Extracts I , The Mythical Man-Month – Extracts II , The Mythical Man-Month Lecture , and Review/Summary of The Mythical Man-Month , for example). Rather than repeat an overview of the book's content as a whole, I focus in this post on a few key points and in light of some modern day software best practices and ideologies.

Chapter 19 ("Propositions of The Mythical Man-Month : True or False?") of the "Anniversary Edition" will especially appeal to the reader who is impatient or lacks the time to read the entire book, but wants to get an overall view of Brooks's assertions. Because Brooks uses this chapter to present "the essence of the 1975 book" in "outline form," Brooks's assertions ("facts and rule-of-thumb-type generalizations from experience") from his original book are presented in "stark form" (approximately 20 pages). The presence of this chapter in the "Anniversary Edition" is another reason I don't break the book down chapter-by-chapter here. This chapter does more than simply summarize the assertions from the original book; it also includes some of Brooks's 1995 comments based on 20 more years of observation and the benefit of hindsight .

In his post The Mythical Man Month: Book Review , Mark Needham concludes his review of this book with the statement, "I really enjoyed reading this book and seeing how a lot of the ideas in more modern methodologies were already known about in the 1980s and aren’t in essence new ideas." I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, though the truth of it is possibly even more staggering: these were observations in a book published in 1975 based on Brooks's experiences working on OS/360 development in the mid-1960 s and on follow-on conversations in the late 1960 s. In other words, some of the things we might think are "new" or "trendy" today have been around and known for 45 years or more! As a side note, this reminds me of an Alan M. Davis presentation to the Denver Java Users Group ("What's New About New Methods of Software Development?") in late 2006 in which he demonstrated how many of the "new" methodologies and tactics of today have very similar predecessors in years past and how we seem to cycle between them over decades.

The following points made by Brooks are especially interest when one keeps the thought in the back of his or her mind that this book was published in 1975 based on experiences in the mid- to late- 1960s (these quotes are from the Chapter 19 summarization but are based on text in the 1975 edition):

• "Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as poor ones..." [ craftsmanship ]
• ""A small sharp team is best - as few minds as possible." [ agile ]
• "Fixing a defect has a substantial (20 to 50 percent) chance of introducing another. After each fix, one must run the entire bank of test cases previously run against a system to ensure that it has not been damaged in an obscure way." [ regression testing ]
• "It is worthwhile to build lots of debugging scaffolding and test code, perhaps even 50 percent as much as the product being debugged." [ unit testing ]
• "To keep documentation maintained, it is crucial that it be incorporated in the source program, rather than kept as a separate document ... even high-level language syntax does not at all convey purpose." [ DRY principle ]

There are many more observations in The Mythical Man-Month that demonstrate that Brooks and other developers of the time understood many of the same basics of software development that we understand (and sometimes "discover" again) today. Many of these are more well-known and are called out in other reviews and so I don't list them here except for these must-list quotes:

• "More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined."
• Brooke's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
• "Hence the man-month as a unit for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth."

One of the sections I found particularly timely (especially for a 1975 book in 2011) was Brooks's coverage of how a software architect can influence implementation. This can be especially sensitive when the architect's vision is not implemented by the developer in the way the architect desired. Brooks's tips seem very practical. He states that the architect must come to terms with the fact that the person implementing the code has "creative responsibility" for that implementation. He further advises that the architect should always have an idea of implementing any of his or her designs, but must at the same time be willing to accept an equally good alternative approach proposed by the person implementing the code. Brooks further recommends that the architect make all suggestions regarding implementation "quietly and privately," be "ready to forego credit," and be willing to listen to the implementer's "suggestions for architecture improvements." This seems like sound advice to me based on my experiences on both sides of this relationship.

In the 2005 article Quoted Often, Followed Rarely , Brooks states:

The book is really more about management than about technology. The technology has changed immensely, so some of the old chapters are totally out of sync. On the other hand, people haven't changed much. That's why Homer and Shakespeare and the Bible are still relevant, because they're all dealing with human nature. I think that's part of the explanation for this book: The problems of managing people in teams have not changed, though the medium in which people are designing and the tools they are using have. Some people have called the book the "bible of software engineering." I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.

The concepts contained in this quote may be the most important thing to convey in a review of The Mythical Man-Month . The appeal of the book is its coverage of and focus on management of people. That has remained timeless and unchanged over the decades. The technologies have definitely changed significantly and that may be the biggest negative about this book. Brooks's examples based on specific products, tools, and languages in 1975 were certainly more illustrative then than they are today for the typical reader. For example, his 1975 book calls PL/I "the only reasonable candidate for system programming today." At times, some of the reading can be a little more challenging with lack of direct experience with the products of which Brooks mentions. However, in most cases, this is not much of a hindrance in the end because of the human element is the focus of the book and this is mostly unchanged even now. In Chapter 19 of the Anniversary Edition, Brooks reflects on the continuing popularity of his book and states: "to the extent that The MM-M is about people and teams, obsolescence should be slow."

The Mythical Man-Month is really about very large enterprise software development projects. This is important to bear in mind when reading things that may seem obvious to someone working on a small project. The last part of the quote above is famous: "Some people have called the book the 'bible of software engineering.' I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it." Brooks's book is filled with Biblical references and he is obviously acquainted with the Holy Bible. Sadly, Brooks's quote "everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it" is all too true today. We'll keep reading it, but it'd be nice to do more to change things in large-scale software development projects.

Some people feel that The Mythical Man-Month is defeatist and even depressing. I don't get the same feeling from reading it. Rather, I feel that it reminds us that certain behaviors are detrimental and dysfunctional. It also reminds us that we shouldn't wait for the "next big thing," but should instead continue to improve our craft as best we can. Many practical tips and suggestions are provided. Brooks obviously loves being in the software development field and this is shown again and again in his book. Brooks concludes the book's "Epilogue: Fifty Years of Wonder, Excitement, and Joy," talking about how he used to be able to "read all the journals and conference proceedings," but eventually had to give up specific interests one by one as the knowledge exploded. He concludes, "Too many interests, too many exciting opportunities for learning, research, and thought. What a marvelous predicament! Not only is the end not in sight, the pace is not slackening. We have many future joys." I definitely agree.

Original posting available at http://marxsoftware.blogspot.com/ (Inspired by Actual Events)

This story, "Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition" was originally published by JavaWorld .

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Dustin Marx is a principal software engineer and architect at Raytheon Company. His previous published work for JavaWorld includes Java and Flex articles and " More JSP best practices " (July 2003) and " JSP Best Practices" (November 2001).

Copyright © 2011 IDG Communications, Inc.

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The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition Paperback – 2 August 1995

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• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc
• Publication date 2 August 1995
• Dimensions 23.04 x 15.52 x 1.91 cm
• ISBN-10 9780201835953
• ISBN-13 978-0201835953
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Amazon.com review, from the inside flap.

0201835959P04062001

From the Back Cover

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month . With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

About the Author

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., was born in 1931 in Durham, NC. He received an A.B. summa cum laude in physics from Duke and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, under Howard Aiken, the inventor of the early Harvard computers.

At Chapel Hill, Dr. Brooks founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired it from 1964 through 1984. He has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. His current teaching and research is in computer architecture, molecular graphics, and virtual environments.

He joined IBM, working in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, 1956-1965. He is best known as the "father of the IBM System/360", having served as project manager for its development and later as manager of the Operating System/360 software project during its design phase. For this work he, Bob Evans, and Erick Block were awarded and received a National Medal of Technology in 1985.

Dr. Brooks and Dura Sweeney in 1957 patented a Stretch interrupt system for the IBM Stretch computer that introduced most features of today's interrupt systems. He coined the term computer architecture . His System/360 team first achieved strict compatibility, upward and downward, in a computer family. His early concern for word processing led to his selection of the 8-bit byte and the lowercase alphabet for the System/360, engineering of many new 8-bit input/output devices, and providing a character-string datatype in PL/I.

In 1964 he founded the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. Currently, he is Kenan Professor of Computer Science . His principal research is in real-time, three-dimensional, computer graphics-"virtual reality." His research has helped biochemists solve the structure of complex molecules and enabled architects to "walk through" buildings still being designed. He is pioneering the use of force display to supplement visual graphics.

Brooks distilled the successes and failures of the development of Operating System/360 in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays in Software Engineering , (1975). He further examined software engineering in his well-known 1986 paper, "No Silver Bullet." He is just completing a two-volume research monograph, Computer Architecture , with Professor Gerrit Blaauw. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice within The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition .

Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Computer Society's McDowell and Computer Pioneer Awards, the ACM Allen Newell and Distinguished Service Awards, the AFIPS Harry Goode Award, and an honorary Doctor of Technical Science from ETH-Zürich.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Deo soli gloria or Soli Deo Gloria -- To God alone be the glory. Chapel Hill, N.C., F.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0201835959
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc; 2nd edition (2 August 1995)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780201835953
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0201835953
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 528 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 23.04 x 15.52 x 1.91 cm
• #93 in Hardware & DIY
• #170 in Software Architecture
• #198 in Software Design & Engineering

About the author

Frederick p. brooks, jr..

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., is Kenan Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was an architect of the IBM Stretch and Harvest computers. He was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware and the decision to switch computer byte size from 6 to 8 bits. He then managed the initial development of the Operating System/360 software suite: operating system, 16 compilers, communications, and utilities.

He founded the UNC Department of Computer Science in 1964 and chaired it for 20 years. His research there has been in computer architecture, software engineering, and interactive 3-D computer graphics (protein visualization graphics and "virtual reality"). His best-known books are The Mythical Man-Month (1975, 1995); Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution (with G.A. Blaauw, 1997); and The Design of Design (2010).

Dr. Brooks has received the National Medal of Technology, the A.M. Turing award of the ACM, the Bower Award and Prize of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the IEEE, and others. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering and of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He became a Christian at age 31 and has taught an adult Sunday school class for 35 years. He chaired the Executive Committee for the 1973 Research Triangle Billy Graham Crusade. He and Mrs. Nancy Greenwood Brooks are faculty advisors to a graduate student chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They have three children and nine grandchildren.

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