Overview of Mythical man month ,its all about Software Engineering,

1. MUSTAJAR AHMAD SHAH
XIDIAN UNIVERSITY
MSPK1337@GMAIL.COM

2. About Book
Author Frederick Brooks
Subject Software project management
Publisher Addison-Wesley
Publication
date
January 1, 1975-1995
ISBN 0-201-00650-2 (1975 ed.)

3. About Author
Name Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr
Date Of Birth 1931
Education Ph.D. in CS from Harvard, 1956
Working experience
1956-1965 worked in IBM
1964
founded CS Department at the
University of North Carolina, chaired
it for 20 years.

4. What is Programming
Software like a tar pit: The more you fight it, the
deeper you sink.
There is Big Difference between Program and a Product
What is Product:
• can be run, tested, repaired by anyone
• usable in many environments on many sets of data.
• must be tested
• Documentation
Why is programming fun?
Brooks offers five reasons:
 Making things…
 that others find useful.
 Making complex objects out of parts.
 Continuous learning because the task is always different.
 Using tools and “materials” that do not degrade.

5. What is Programming
What causes problems?
 Computers demand perfection.
 A person does not control the
“circumstances” of their work (goals,
resources, information).
 Working out the bugs takes an order of
magnitude longer than one expects.
 The resulting software seems to be
obsolete before it is released.

6. Project Failures
failure to meet schedule is the reason for most software project
failures.
Reasons:
 Assumption that all will go well led the schedule
plan.
 We confuse effort with progress.
 pressure to reduce time estimates.
 Poor monitoring of project progress
 Natural response to schedule slippage is adding
manpower, which makes matters worse.

7. The bearing of a child takes 9
months, no matter how many women
are assigned
Software Products are sequential in nature
 They generally consist of several steps that must be completed
one after another
 These steps cannot be worked on at the same time

8. Adding manpower to a
late software project
makes it later.
According to Author
• Training Required for new people
• Intercommunication and basic understanding of problem and
the proposed solution.

9. Communication Path
2 people, 1 channel
3 people, 3 channels
4 people, 6 channels 5 people, 10 channels
N=n(n-1)
2
20 PEOPLE, 190 CHANNELS!

10. The Surgical
Team
productivity varies hugely between
good programmers and poor ones.
 More people working on a project = more
miscommunication between those people
Solution
 Mill’s proposal: divide large job into segments,
each tackled by a surgical team:

11. Chief Programmer
Administrator
Secretary
Editor
Secretary
“Co-pilot”
Programming clerk
Tool smith
Tester
Language lawyer
The Pilot
The know it
all guy
Documentatio
n
Supervisor
Mill’s Proposal

12. How to make sure everyone hears
architectural decisions?Solution
• Written specifications
• Formal definitions
• Direct incorporation
• Conferences
• Multiple implementations
• Telephone log
• Product test
Communication Skills

13. Why Did the Tower of
Babel Fail?
 A clear mission
 Enough resources (people and materials)
 Enough time
 Proper technology
Bad communication in software projects are the
root of all evil.
• How shall teams communicate with each
other? In as many ways as possible:
• Informally,
 Meetings,
 project workbook.

14. How To Plan
 One should plan his project in such a way that it is easy to
modify the system at any stage.

15. Update your Self
A good craftsman is known by his tools.
The tools of a programmer are:
 Target machines
The final testing environment
 Vehicle machines
The programmer’s work environment
 Data services
Compiler, assembler, libraries, debugging tools
 HLL & interactive programming
Language and programming tool of choice (e.g.: Java
and Visual Studio)

16. Schedule's
Schedules are important to keep
• Clearly define what needs to be done
Milestones should be well defined and must be reached on time.
• Pay attention to schedule slipping
Stick to schedules.

17. Documentation
Reasons for having formal documents
• Recording decisions
• Communicating those decisions
• Data base / checklist (programmer directives)

18. Documentation
Documentation is important to the user, as well
What kinds of documentation do they need?
• How to use the product
• How the product works
• How to adapt the product to their needs

19. Quotations
 Good cooking takes time. If you are made to
wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you.
 Adding manpower to a late software project
makes it later.
 How does a project get to be a year late?... One
day at a time.
 Good judgment comes from experience, and
experience comes from bad judgment.

20. Quotations
 All programmers are optimists
 The bearing of a child takes nine months, no
matter how many women are assigned.