Studying “The Mythical Man-Month” in Collaboration with a Client
By TJ Christofferson
December 23, 2024
Here at End Point we did an enlightening and fun eleven-week study group in collaboration with one of our clients. We worked through Frederick Brooks Jr.’s book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, which was originally published in 1975, with an expanded edition published in 1995. In certain ways this book is still applicable to our time, and it was a delight to discuss it in a structured study group with coworkers and peers. This particular study group even piqued the curiosity of the owners of both our companies who participated throughout the course!
As part of our effort to continually improve our abilities and awareness, and thus build a strong technical company culture, End Point has done many study groups over the years, such as the Ruby Fight Club and the You Don’t Know JS study group. Participation in these groups is voluntary, and they have covered a range of other topics including PostgreSQL, terminal fluency skills, and regular expressions. The opportunity to step away from regular work duties for an hour during the week, and to have meaningful discourse between coworkers has been invaluable for building relationships across teams.
For this group, we collaborated with our client Cybergenetics, who works in forensic DNA analysis. We have been working with Cybergenetics since 2003 on PostgreSQL, websites, system deployment automation, and security. A few Cybergenetics staff members joined our PostgreSQL study group some years ago.
Dr. Mark Perlin, the Chief Scientific and Executive Officer of Cybergenetics, approached us a few months earlier with the desire for his team to better understand the history and controversies of software engineering, and to relate relevant topics to software user or developer experiences. He thought working together through this book would be a good way to achieve both those goals, and we agreed.
Fred Brooks’s book on software engineering and project management has a central theme that adding more people to a software project that is behind schedule usually delays it even longer, a concept known as “Brooks’s Law.” Each chapter covers various reasons why this is the case, such as increased communication complexity and overhead, conceptual integrity, and design cohesion degradation. He posits that properly planning projects, including using realistic estimations and considering communication needs, is essential to avoid delays.
Though not all of us found significant modern application for Brooks’s book, it was an interesting historical read, with some relevant points. One such point is his idea that looking forward to some “silver bullet” solution wastes effort and inhibits forward progress. Today, when some are counting on AI technology to magically fix their code, remove the need to properly document that code, or erase the discipline of software development altogether, it seems wise to apply Brooks’s advice and avoid treating AI and similar advances as a “silver bullet.”
At End Point we love encouraging thought and discussion on relevant topics, and we appreciate having a historical awareness of what we’re doing in the context of decades. We also love an opportunity to collaborate with a client on something that is mutually beneficial.
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