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.:OpenSceneGraph:. Runtime Revolution Ltd - Application design and programming for. The Mythical Man-Month. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".

The Mythical Man-Month

This idea is known as Brooks' law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping. Brooks' observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, a decision that he would later conclude had, counter-intuitively, delayed the project even further.

He also made the mistake of asserting that one project — writing an ALGOL compiler — would require six months, regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The CPAN Search Site.