The Mythical Man-Month Ch 7 - 9

Reference Information:

Title: The Mythical Man-Month

Author: Frederick P. Brooks

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Summary:

Chapter 7 - Why did the Tower of Babel fail?

The author addresses the question - why did the Tower of Babel fail in order to emphasize the importance of communication in any project. Teams should communicate as often as possible using various ways - team meetings, informal meetings, using workbook and logs. Every person on the project should have access to the information presented in the workbook. Workbook is nothing but a collection of all the documents prepared by all the teams about their work.

Chapter 8 - Calling the Shot:

In this chapter, the author talks about the difference between how long the programmer thinks the task will take and the amount of time the task really takes. It's important to understand this difference to make accurate estimates to deliver on time. In almost all cases, tasks take a longer time to complete than it's estimated. The author also talks about various types of data:

• Portman's data -each job takes twice as long as expected.
• Aron's data - regarding programmer productivity on large systems
• Harr's data - productivity falls into two categories: control programs at about 600 words/man-year and language translators at about 2200 words/man-year.
• OS/360 data - confirmed Harr's data.
• Corbato's data - data is comparable in terms of the kind of effort included.

Chapter 9 - Ten pounds in a five pound sack:

In this chapter, the author mentions tat the size control (controlling the size of the programs) is very vital for project's success. It's important to think about the overall code rather than thinking about the snippet that you are currently working on. Space wise expensive programs are not effective. More space the program takes, more memory it will consume.

Discussion:

These chapters mentioned some brilliant ideas that were totally unknown to me. For example, various types of data as mentioned in chapter 8. Also, as a programmer I was aware that your programs should be space wise efficient, however, this point was not bought up by any programming methodology book. Also, the author repeats his emphasis on communication in chapter 7, and I completely agree with the author when he says that effective communication is the key to the project's success.