“The challenge and the mission are to find real solutions to real problems on actual schedules with available resources.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Goals Copy Share Image
“Everything has been composed, just not yet written down. LETTER TO LEOPOLD MOZART [1780]” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Mozart Copy Share Image
“Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Conceptual Copy Share Image
“The job done least well by project managers is to utilize the technical genius who is not strong on management talent.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Genius Copy Share Image
“the conceptual integrity of a system determines its ease of use.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Conceptual Copy Share Image
“To summarize: write down explicit guesses for the attributes of the user set. It is far better to be explicit and wrong… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Summarize Copy Share Image
“Any product that is sufficiently big or urgent to require the effort of many minds thus encounters a peculiar difficulty: the result… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Adversity Copy Share Image
“The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Management Copy Share Image
“I believe that large programming projects suffer management problems different in kind from small ones, due to division of labor. I believe… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Division of labor Copy Share Image
“Indeed, the cost-performance ratio of the product will depend most heavily on the implementer, just as ease of use depends most heavily… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Architect Copy Share Image
“Finally, a manager's documents give him a data base and checklist. By reviewing them periodically he sees where he is, and he… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Leader Copy Share Image
“The programmer at wit's end for lack of space can often do best by disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Programming Copy Share Image
“The manual, or written specification, is a necessary tool, though not a sufficient one. The manual is the external specification of the… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Manual Copy Share Image
“Any attempt to fix it with minimum effort will repair the local and obvious, but unless the structure is pure or the… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Programming Copy Share Image
“Oversimplifying outrageously, we state Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. This then is the demythologizing of… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Manpower Copy Share Image
“The big change has been in the hardware/software cost ratio. The buyer of a $2-million machine in 1960 felt that he could… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Change Copy Share Image
“...give a great deal of attention to keeping his managers and his technical people as interchangeable as their talents allow. The barriers… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Definitive Copy Share Image
“Hustle provides the cushion, the reserve capacity, that enables a team to cope with routine mishaps, to anticipate and forfend minor calamities.… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Hustle Copy Share Image
“I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Programming Copy Share Image
“Conway's Law predicts: "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."[1]… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Communication Copy Share Image
“Third, enumerating the frequencies explicitly helps everyone recognize which decisions depend upon which user set properties. Even this sort of informal sensitivity… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Important decision Copy Share Image
“If, as I believe, the conceptual structures we construct today are too complicated to be accurately specified in advance, and too complex… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Complexity Copy Share Image
“This great church is an incomparable work of art. There is neither aridity nor confusion in the tenets it sets forth. .… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Art Copy Share Image
“Power tools for the mind. The most dramatic way to improve the productivity of management information systems (MIS) programmers is to go… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Computers Copy Share Image
“Lehman and Belady have studied the history of successive releases in a large operating system.[6] They find that the total number of… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr History Copy Share Image
“Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build; they have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Complexity Copy Share Image
“A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Computers Copy Share Image
“Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Imagination Copy Share Image
“Why Have Formal Documents? First, writing the decisions down is essential. Only when one writes do the gaps appear and the inconsistencies… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Writing Copy Share Image
“Especially noteworthy is his comment that new people added late in a development project must be team players willing to pitch in… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Football Copy Share Image
“For the human makers of things, the incompletenesses and inconsistencies of our ideas become clear only during implementation. Thus it is that… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Disciplines Copy Share Image
“The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate. Fourth” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Computers Copy Share Image
“Structuring an organization for change is much harder than designing a system for change. Each man must be assigned to jobs that… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Change Copy Share Image
“Fifth, when schedule slippage is recognized, the natural (and traditional) response is to add manpower. Like dousing a fire with gasoline, this… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Fire Copy Share Image
“I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Design Ideas Copy Share Image
“Years later, when I got to college, I learned about an important theory of psychology called Learned Helplessness, developed by Dr. Martin… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Depression Copy Share Image
“First, one must perform perfectly. The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Computers Copy Share Image
“As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing cease to gain any ground. Each forward… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Backward Copy Share Image
“I have long enjoyed asking candidate programmers, "Where is next November?" If the question is too cryptic, then, "Tell me about your… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Programmers Copy Share Image