Brooks' Law... or Not?

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” — Fred Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month”, 1975.

I think we should stop calling these kinds of observations “laws.” It feels like we’re borrowing the authority of science too freely. Brooks’s Law isn’t a natural law. It’s an observation about what happens when teams are poorly structured and managed under pressure.

That said, the insight still matters. Adding people to a late project often makes it later, especially in waterfall-managed environments. But a lot has changed in 50 years.

Modern practices like eXtreme Programming, for example, help reduce the cost of adding new engineers. Pair/mob programming make it easier to bring people into a team without slowing things down too much.

The working model has also shifted. Many teams now focus on long-lived products instead of short-term projects. That changes how we think about onboarding. In a product team, hiring someone isn’t just about hitting a deadline. It’s a long-term investment.

Brook’s insight about coordination and communication overhead is still valid. But in teams that work incrementally and iteratively, with the right practices in place, the impact can be reduced. Sometimes adding people is still the right move.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.