Metrics
An Empirical Examination of Brooks' Law
Building on some interesting research performed by QSM's Don Beckett, I take a look at how Brooks' Law stacks up against a sample of large projects from our database:
Does adding staff to a late project only make it later? It’s hard to tell. Large team projects, on the whole, did not take notably longer than average. For small projects the strategy had some benefit, keeping deliveries at or below the industry average, but this advantage disappeared at the 100,000 line of code mark. At best, aggressive staffing may keep a project’s schedule within the normal range of variability.
