<ul><li>To account for Brooks's law, you should avoid assuming that adding more resources to a project will help.</li><li>Assess whether you should add resources, how many and in what way.</li><li>Consider how adding more resources can help the project or harm the project.</li><li>Consider how effective adding the resources will be in leading to the desired outcomes.</li><li>Consider how efficient adding resources will be in terms of avoiding wasted resources.</li><li>In some instances, changing the project's scope or moving its deadline is preferable.</li></ul>

How to account for Brooks’ law

If someone else in your organization insists on adding more resources, consider doing the following:<ul><li>Ask them to explain their reasoning, and explain the flaws in it.</li><li>Explain to them why it’s a bad idea, potentially while mentioning Brooks’ law.</li><li>Help them find an alternative solution.</li><li>Convince them to add fewer resources.</li></ul> A humorous solution is the Bermuda plan, which involves putting 90% of a company’s programmers on a boat and sending them to Bermuda so that the remaining 10% can finish the work.

Adding unnecessary resources

Brooks’ law is the observation that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”. Applied wider, this principle shows that adding more resources, especially people, to various types of projects is often unhelpful and counterproductive.

Brooks’ law

<ul><li>“Nine women can’t make a baby in one month”</li></ul> <ul><li>“You get water by digging one well a hundred feet deep, not a hundred wells one foot deep”</li></ul> <ul><li>“What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months”.</li></ul>

Humorous statements associated with Brooks’ law

Brooks' law can be expanded in three ways to generalize it and consider it in other contexts. <ul><li>Brooks's law can be applied to other endeavours such as different types of business, academic, and hobby projects.</li><li>Brook's law can be applied to negative outcomes other than delays. E.g., adding people to a software project might lead to a worse product or increased conflicts between team members.</li><li>Brook's law can be applied to resources other than manpower. For example, adding money to a certain project might not lead to it finishing faster because spending more money doesn't address the real problem.</li></ul>

Generalizing Brooks’ law

A classic example of Brooks’ law is a software project behind schedule. This leads management to allocate more developers to it, which causes further delays because it takes time to train the new developers. Another example is a project that could be handled quickly by a small team but is delayed because too many people are added unnecessarily so that communication and decision-making slow down.

Examples of Brooks’ law

Whether or not Brooks' law applies in a situation depends on various factors, such as: <ul><li>The attributes of the people working on the project - their ability and willingness to teach others.</li><li>The attributes of the people who are being added to the project - their ability and willingness to learn new material.</li><li>The number of new people added to the project.</li><li>The overall team size.</li><li>The group's social dynamic.</li><li>How group members are expected to communicate.</li><li>The hierarchy and decision-making process.</li><li>The type of tasks involved in the project</li><li>Why additional manpower is added.</li></ul>

Caveat about Brooks’ law

<ul><li>Adding more people to a project doesn't mean it will be completed faster.</li><li>People who are already working on the project must spend time training newcomers.</li><li>It takes time for new people to join the project to become productive.</li><li>Time is spent on communication rather than work, which can quickly rise as people are added to a project. The larger a group is, the more agreement and organization it will need.</li><li>Certain tasks cannot be divided into partitions that separate people can handle.</li></ul>

How to account for Brooks’ law

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