Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition, The: Essays On Software Engineering

Featuritis. The besetting temptation for the architect of a general purpose tool such as a spreadsheet or a word processor is to overload the product with features of marginal utility, at the expense of performance and even of ease of use. The appeal of proposed features is evident at the outset; the performance penalty is evident only as system te

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Capers Jones, writing first in a series of memoranda and later in a book, offers a penetrating insight, which has been stated by several of my correspondents. "NSB," like most writings at the time, was focused on productivity, the software output per unit of input. Jones says, "No. Focus on quality, and productivity will follow."

Add one component at a time. This precept, too, is obvious, but optimism and laziness tempt us to violate

Fostering a total-system, user-oriented attitude may well be the most important function of the programming manager.

Even though they have not taken centuries to build, most programming systems reflect conceptual disunity far worse than that of cathedrals. Usually this arises not from a serial succession of master designers, but from the separation of design into many tasks done by many men. I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important considera

I have earlier argued that the sheer number of minds to be coordinated affects the cost of the effort, for a major part of the cost is communication and correcting the ill effects of miscommunication (system debugging). This, too, suggests that one wants the system to be built by as few minds as possible.

Since software construction is inherently a systems effort—an exercise in complex interrelationships—communication effort is great, and it quickly dominates the decrease in individual task time brought about by partitioning. Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens, the schedule. Systems Test

In most computer projects there comes a day when it is discovered that the machine and the manual don't agree. When the confrontation follows, the manual usually loses, for it can be changed far more quickly and cheaply than the machine.