Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> First: Read the Mythical Man Month

I have, it's a brilliant book. Helped me greatly during my career. However it's about scaling an already broken (and late) project in a very naive way.

Luckily we've learnt a lot since then - and it turns out that decomposing the problem into 4-6 person chucks and optimizing for minimum dependencies is a good strategy to close-to-linear scalability :)




"However it's about scaling an already broken (and late) project in a very naive way."

If that's all you remember of it, you really need to reread it (and I find myself mildly skeptical that you did in the first place - although it could very well be that it's been long enough you thought those ideas were elsewhere). The title - and Brooks' Law - is about that, but the book covers a whole lot more. Including discussions of approaches to decomposing problems into <10 person chunks and optimizing for minimum dependencies.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: