Conway's Law predicts: Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.[1] Conway goes on to point out tha...
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Sometimes the problem is to discover what the problem is.
Program maintenance involves no cleaning, lubrication, or repair of deterioration. It consists chiefly of changes that repair design defects. Much more often than with hardware, these changes include...
In collaboration with Sharif Razzaque There are many ways of making a fool of yourself with a digital computer, and to have one more can hardly make any difference. SIR MAURICE WILKES [1959], THE EDSA...
If there are n workers on a project, there are (n2–n)/2 interfaces across which there may be communication, and there are potentially almost 2n teams within which coordination must occur. The purpose...
Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you.
For the human makers of things, the incompletenesses and inconsistencies of our ideas become clear only during implementation.
Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, cre...
Fifth, when schedule slippage is recognized, the natural (and traditional) response is to add manpower. Like dousing a fire with gasoline, this makes matters worse, much worse. More fire requires more...
Even a small amount of use-scenario experience is better than none.
Cosgrove has perceptively pointed out that the programmer delivers satisfaction of a user need rather than any tangible product. And both the actual need and the user's perception of that need will ch...
An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices—wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same...
A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make intention clear to the dumb engine. But a written program has ano...
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination.
The number of months of a project depends upon its sequential constraints. The maximum number of men depends upon the number of independent subtasks.
The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to d...
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one.
Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity.
Power tools for the mind. The most dramatic way to improve the productivity of management information systems (MIS) programmers is to go down to your local computer store and buy off the shelf what th...