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The Mythical Man-month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The Mythical Man-month

Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition

Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Pearson Education · Print & ebook · August 2, 1995

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month.

Programming BasicsSoftware Project ManagementProject Managementmonth
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Who it’s for
Software engineering facts meet considered opinion on the difficult work of managing complex projects.
Themes
Software project management, Division of labor in large projects, Conceptual integrity in software
Genres
Software Project Management, Project Management, Programming Basics

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About this book

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.

Continue reading

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."

Managing Complexity

Software engineering facts meet considered opinion on the difficult work of managing complex projects.

Come here for

  • Hard-won perspective on software project management
  • A close look at the ideas behind large programming projects

Expect

  • Essays rooted in Brooks’s work on System/360 and OS/360
  • A later reckoning with earlier arguments, including “No Silver Bullet”

Where it sits

Software Project Management95%
Programming Basics27%
Project Management24%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Software Project Management
Authors
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Publisher
Pearson Education
Published
August 2, 1995
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Software project management · Division of labor in large projects · Conceptual integrity in software
Reading lane
Software Project Management