“Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Copy Share Image
“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
“the conceptual integrity of a system determines its ease of use.” — Frederick P. Brooks Jr 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
“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
“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
“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 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 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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 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
“...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
“Program maintenance involves no cleaning, lubrication, or repair of deterioration. It consists chiefly of changes that repair design defects. Much more often… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Copy Share Image
“Radically better software robustness and productivity are to be had only by moving up a level, and making programs by the composition… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“I do not believe we will find the magic here. Program verification is a very powerful concept, and it will be very… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Copy Share Image
“Peopleware. A major contribution during recent years has been DeMarco and Lister's 1987 book, Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Its underlying thesis… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Management 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
“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 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
“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
“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
“The metaprogrammer who uses one, or especially several, applications as components in a larger system. This is the user whose needs are… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Technology Copy Share Image
“it sprang from a conviction that the quality of the people on a project, and their organization and management, are much more… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Excellence Copy Share Image
“Reducing the role conflict. The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Leader Copy Share Image
“It is more important that milestones be sharp-edged and unambiguous than that they be easily verifiable by the boss. Rarely will a… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr 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 Copy Share Image
“The large organization will consist of many semi-autonomous units, which we may call quasi-firms. Each of them will have a large amount… — Frederick P. Brooks Jr Freedom Copy Share Image