| | |  | Software Design, Testing & Engineering | Home » » » The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) | | | | | | | Description: | | No book on software project management has been so influential and so timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. Now 20 years after the publication of his book, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (best known as the "father of the IBM System 360") revisits his original ideas and develops new thoughts and advice both for readers familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Frederick P. Brooks | | Paperback:
| 336 pages | | Publisher:
| Addison-Wesley Professional | | Publication Date:
| August 12, 1995 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0201835959 | | Package Length:
| 9.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.8 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.95 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 146 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 Philosophical essays on software, projects and purposeJul 19, 2010
This book is a classic for a reason. Every essay by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. addresses software engineering and proves invaluable for those interested in the history and processes of that field. getAbstract also recommends Brooks' book to anyone who plans or organizes major projects. The collection remains timely due to the clarity of his thought and the educated loveliness of his prose. When Brooks is writing about programming, he's never just writing about programming. He's writing about the complexities of life, and about how best to plan, organize and communicate the concepts you need to overcome those complexities. This 20th-anniversary edition contains new essays in which Brooks reflects on his earlier writing - especially his principles and predications - and responds to his critics. The result showcases a singular, markedly honest mind at work.
 A classic - somewhat dated, but required reading nonethelessMay 16, 2010
The Mythical Man-Month is Frederick Brooks' seminal collection of essays vis-a-vis software engineering. From the title, one would imagine that the tome's unifying thesis revolves around the discredited idea that adding more engineers to a project will enable the project to be completed in fewer months, or, to put it another way, that the length of a project's schedule is a linear function of the number of workers assigned to that project. Using graphs based on mathematical formulas and on research conducted by other specialists, Brooks neatly dismantles the person-month myth - demonstrating, in fact, that in many projects (particularly if complex interrelationships are required or if the project is behind schedule), adding more bodies often increases the time required for completion.
Despite what the title suggests, however, the above-mentioned topic is but one of many covered by this work. Other topics include the distinction between the "essential" and "accidental" elements of software design; the distinction between building a computer program vs. designing a "programming a systems product" (and the ninefold difference in complexity and time between the two); the quest for software engineering's elusive "silver bullet"; the importance of documentation; the surprisingly small percentage of time that actual writing of code occupies on the timeline of a typical software-development project (as contrasted with time needed for testing and debugging); large teams vs. small "surgical teams" (and why the latter isn't always the answer for all projects); the "buy versus build" dilemma; and many others.
Much of the material in the first several chapters of the book appears obsolete (although there are still valuable principles that can be gleaned). However, in chapter 19 (a kind of "retrospective" chapter added 20 years after the original publication date), Brooks amends much of the out-of-date material, e.g., his earlier views on program size and space metrics (rendered all but irrelevant in this age of multi-gigabyte memory), and the degree to which the (albeit hard-to-predict) personal computer explosion and the growth of the Internet. However, even since the time of the book's revision (1995), further explosions have taken place in the computing industry - most notably with regards to Web 2.0, the ubiquity of data-driven Web applications (these even obsoleting many shrink-wrapped products), Web services, and development methodologies such as Agile and XP - that even chapter 19 may seem a little out-of-date to the modern developer. In spite of this, the principles of the book are still applicable: the chapters on estimation, team size, and the dismantling of the person-month myth are enough to make this tome required reading for developers and managers alike - especially the latter.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Great book; miserable ebook formattingApr 19, 2010
A classic book updated with more recent thoughts by the author. I bought the ebook and was greatly disappointed by the formatting, especially of Chapter 18, the recapitulation of the author's original theses. On my Kindle 2, for example, only parts of the propositions from Chapter 2 show. Advancing the page doesn't help. Reducing the font size shows that the "missing" material is there but the tiny font makes reading impossible.
Buy the paperback, by all means, but Addison-Wesley needs to take this abomination of an ebook.off the market. Professor Brooks deserves far better.
0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Book Review - Mythical Man MonthApr 01, 2010
I was very disappointed with this "Classic" volume. It doesn't seem to have aged very well!
A solid bookNov 05, 2009
The author really knows what he is talking about. As a computer programmer, I can tell that the author is speaking from experience. And he makes his points clearly and thoroughly.
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