The Mythical Man-Month: Anniversary Edition View Larger Image | Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Addison-Wesley, Paperback, 2nd edition, Published August 1995, 322 pages, ISBN 0201835959 | List Price: $39.99
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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. 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."
Table of Contents
1. The Tar Pit.
2. The Mythical Man-Month.
3. The Surgical Team.
4. Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design.
5. The Second-System Effect.
6. Passing the Word.
7. Why Did the Tower of Babel Fail?
8. Calling the Shot.
9. Ten Pounds in a Five-Pound Sack.
10. The Documentary Hypothesis.
11. Plan to Throw One Away.
12. Sharp Tools.
13. The Whole and the Parts.
14. Hatching a Castrophe.
15. The Other Face.
16. No Silver Bullet -- Essence and Accident.
17. "No Silver Bullet" ReFired.
18. Propositions of The Mythical Man-Month: True or False?
19. The Mythical Man-Month After 20 Years.
Epilogue.
Notes and references.
Index.
About the Author
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., was born in 1931 in Durham, NC. He
received an A.B. summa cum laude in physics from Duke and a Ph.D. in computer
science from Harvard, under Howard Aiken, the inventor of the early Harvard
computers.
At Chapel Hill, Dr. Brooks founded the Department of Computer Science and chaired
it from 1964 through 1984. He has served on the National Science Board and the
Defense Science Board. His current teaching and research is in computer architecture,
molecular graphics, and virtual environments.
He joined IBM, working in Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, 1956-1965. He is best
known as the "father of the IBM System/360", having served as project
manager for its development and later as manager of the Operating System/360
software project during its design phase. For this work he, Bob Evans, and Erick
Block were awarded and received a National Medal of Technology in 1985.
Dr. Brooks and Dura Sweeney in 1957 patented a Stretch interrupt system for
the IBM Stretch computer that introduced most features of today's interrupt
systems. He coined the term computer architecture . His System/360 team first
achieved strict compatibility, upward and downward, in a computer family. His
early concern for word processing led to his selection of the 8-bit byte and
the lowercase alphabet for the System/360, engineering of many new 8-bit input/output
devices, and providing a character-string datatype in PL/I.
In 1964 he founded the Computer Science Department at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and chaired it for 20 years. Currently, he is Kenan
Professor of Computer Science. His principal research is in real-time, three-dimensional,
computer graphics-"virtual reality." His research has helped biochemists
solve the structure of complex molecules and enabled architects to "walk
through" buildings still being designed. He is pioneering the use of force
display to supplement visual graphics.
Brooks distilled the successes and failures of the development of Operating
System/360 in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays in Software Engineering, (1975).
He further examined software engineering in his well-known 1986 paper, "No
Silver Bullet." He is just completing a two-volume research monograph,
Computer Architecture, with Professor Gerrit Blaauw. Now, 20 years after the
initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and
added new thoughts and advice within The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition.
Brooks has served on the National Science Board and the Defense Science Board.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. He has received the the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the
IEEE Computer Society's McDowell and Computer Pioneer Awards, the ACM Allen
Newell and Distinguished Service Awards, the AFIPS Harry Goode Award, and an
honorary Doctor of Technical Science from ETH-Zürich.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 3 Average Customer Rating: Nov 29, 2003 Marcus Rangel (marcusrangel@terra.com.br) from Sao Paulo, Brazil
Read the classics, that's what I say.
All those things you think are new about Software Engeneering ? Well, they're not. Brooks already knew most of it. And we are still making the mistakes he pointed out in 1975. God help us. :-)
Jun 5, 2001 Lawrence Lee (lawrence_lee@engineer.com) from CA, US
Read Chapter 18 First
A book which captures years of experience in software engineering. The topics are so pratical that the readers can feel what they are talking about. This book is for the people who is enthusiastic about software engineering and want to improve their software engineering process.
Be sure to read chapter 18 first to get what is relevant and what is not anymore 20 years later. The author is so honest that he admitted he was wrong on "information hiding" 20 years ago. Chapter 18 can also serve as a summary on the whole book.
When you read the book, be sure that you keep the setting in mind. It was written in 1975. Some topics like "time-sharing development" might not be relevant anymore, but it is still good to see what was taken to solve the problem.
Too bad that the site does not let me to put 6 stars.
Jul 9, 1999 Stephen Bloch (sbloch@adelphi.edu) from New York, USA
A lasting classic of software engineering.
When a computer book has a second edition a year or two later, the first edition must have done pretty well. When a computer book has a second edition TWENTY years later, and is still relevant, the first edition must have been a near-miracle.
Most of the author's conclusions from a career of software management are just as valid in 1999 as in 1975, and he's added four chapters written between 1986 and 1995 to discuss how those conclusions have aged. The occasionally quaint terminology in the older chapters only points this out and enriches the reader's sense of history.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the book is that Brooks writes well. It's refreshing to find a computer professional with such a command of the English language.
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