Joe Little does a marvelous job recruiting speakers for the Agile-Carolinas meetings. This month was no exception. Israel Gat from BMC Software discussed “Leading the Disruption”. This presentation focused on releases 2.3 and 2.4 of their distributed system management software. Near the presentation’s end Brooks’ Law was mentioned and the question posed, “Does Brooks’ Law still apply?” Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. ”Brooks’ Law” Why is it so? Jerry (Gerald M.) Weinberg chose to use Brook’s Law in Quality Software Management:

The current mantra for software development hinges around “better, faster, cheaper.” To support these efforts, companies attempt to improve their development process. While helpful, improving the current process has two negative side effects: diminishing returns. The more improved a process becomes the less room for improvement exists. Eventually the process will be as good as possible. over adaptation. The development process becomes highly adapted to the existing system leading to problems when the environment shifts. I say if you want to improve your process, improve

One of the smartest things I did as Interim VP of Engineering for Padcom was let Don talk himself into coming to play with us over the course of several hours overlooking the Puget Sound one weekend morning. Padcom was a small tech company with some unique internetworking technology in the process of building-out into the bigger-time. The unique IP was in software but one of the challenges was shipping a next generation ruggedized client as a delivery vehicle to access markets in public safety.

“Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.” Murphy’s Golden Rule

I saw the forest, and all the work that needed to be done. Ed saw the trees, and noticed that our task would be easier if we could find a way to let the computer do the dull, error prone, highly repetitive tasks.