Fred Brooks Quotes

29 quotes in 437 categories

• How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.
• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
• The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and…
• Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
• Plan to throw one (implementation) away; you will, anyhow.
• Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
• A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software…
• The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is…
• The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of…
• A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
• Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
• Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
• There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in…
• The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one…
• It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little…
• Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your…
• Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build.
• The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is…
• Successful software always gets changed.
• Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

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