The Mythical Man-Month Ch 10 - 12

Reference Information:

Title: The Mythical Man-Month

Author: Frederick P. Brooks

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Summary:

Chapter 10 - The Documentary Hypothesis:

This chapter lays focus on the importance of maintaining good documentation during the project cycle. Maintaining proper formal documentation is also a part of effective communication. It's important to write down the decisions that are made during the process since writing them down help people to retain the information and it also makes it clearer for everybody. This ensures that everybody is on the same page and there is no miscommunication. Also, this documentation provides for a checklist to the manager which helps him to track the progress of the project.

Chapter 11 – Plant to Throw One Away:

By "Plan to Throw One Away", the author means to talk about various changes that need to be incorporated into the project during the development cycle. Some changes are incorporated while some are thrown away. The author talks about how we should estimate and plan for changes during the course of the project. Since, not all the features work exactly as we had expected, the system has to undergo changes. Sometimes, the management structure also changes and the team should be ready for it. Changes might continue to appear even after the product is complete and delivered to the customer.

Chapter 12 – Sharp Tools:

This chapter focuses on the various different tools used during the product development cycle. Some of these tools are:

• Computers
• Operating System
• Programming Language
• Utility and debugging tools
• Test case generators
• Text Processing systems
  

The chapter briefly goes over all of these tools, explains their functionality and importance.

Discussion:

I found these three chapter to be very interesting. It looks like this book had a slow start and it's now picking up pace. The chapters are fun to read and not too verbose. The topics covered by these three chapters are very important. I think this book covers some topics that other programming or project management books do not cover. I think the author made really good points by stressing on the importance of documentation and various tools that increase productivity.