Overcoming Brooks' Law

Most programmers are familiar with the notion that adding new resources to a project will most likely slow down progress if not bring it to a complete stop while new team members are brought up to speed. Unfortunately, in business situations there are often important opportunities missed or dollars lost if a software development team cannot increase the rate at which they complete functionality. Surprisingly, many of the practices of Extreme Programming also help teams overcome Brook’s Law and actually increase production by adding resources. If more software development teams successfully demonstrated this phenomenon, then many business sponsors would be interested in supporting the practices used by these teams.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: XPU
• Authors: Kealy Opelt
• Keywords: Most Programmers, Software Development Teams, Software Engineering, Teams Overcome Brook, XPU 2007