PM Insights: Getting the task dependencies right

PMThink! has a post called Software Innovation Time which includes a video of Google software engineer discussing their concept of "twenty percent time".

Direct Link: http://www.pmthink.com/2008/02/software-innovation-time.htm

Great Quotes on The Majesty Of the Mystical Man-Month

Brad Appleton has an excellent post highlighting the continued greatness of "The Mythical man-month" and the lasting legacy of the book and m3Rule: The Majesty Of the Mystical-Man-Month. In it he provides a ton of links to online resources on all things MMM - articles, definitions, course lectures and, my favorite, classic quotes from/on The Mythical man-month book and concept:

“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.”

“Nine women cannot deliver a baby in one month”

“Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.”

"The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back."

"First, our techniques of estimating are poorly developed. More seriously, they reflect an unvoiced assumption which is quite untrue, i.e., that all will go well."

"Second, our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable.

For more resources (a TON of links) on the Mythical Man-Month, please refer to Brad's original post: http://bradapp.blogspot.com/2008/01/majesty-of-mythical-man-month.html

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