The Mythical Man-Month Ch 18-19

Reference Information

Title: The Mythical Man-Month

Author: Frederick P. Brooks

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Summary
Chapter 18 discussed the main points from the 1975 edition of The Mythical Man-Month in outline form. This included bulleted points of the most important points from each chapter that the author believes to be true, along with the author's commentary. Most of the points were thoroughly discussed in previous chapters.

The cover to the 1975 edition of The Mythical Man-Month. Source: http://var.pulist.net/

Chapter 19 discussed the differences between the 1975 edition of The Mythical Man-Month the state of things 20 years later. It considered the reason why the book is still relevant. Then, the central arguments of the book were considered: the importance of conceptual integrity, the need for an architect on the design to ensure conceptual integrity (including his separation from implementation and the partitioning off of subsystems. The Second System effect was discussed more, taking into account challenges such as designing for large-user sets, dealing with featuritis, the need to explicitly define the user set, and the benefit that defining frequencies of the user set has on the design. The WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing) interface was discussed along with its good and bad points, such as conceptual integrity via a metaphor, user power, and the fact that the author believes it will eventually become obsolete. The author encourages incremental building instead of the waterfall method that is supported throughout the book. Finally, he discusses the importance of people to a project, data that supports his conclusions, the effect that new technology has had (including the tendency to buy and build new software), and what he believes will occur in the future.


Discussion
I thought that chapter 18 was a good summary of the current book, although after having already read the book, it seemed a little unnecessary. I did like the chapter 19 discussed the points made throughout the book in a different light, encouraging the reader to follow practices that the author believes is good given new data and new technology. However, the author debunked many of the things said throughout the book by switching to supporting the incremental build instead of the waterfall method. I thought this made some of the chapters and points that he had made rather pointless, so I wonder what the point of reading them was in the first place? Either way, though, there were some very good points made within this book. I was previously unaware of many of the things discussed (such as the second system effect), so I believe that applying this information to future projects will be very helpful, including incremental programming, being aware of featuritis, and keeping many of the organizational structures that were recommended in mind.