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Re: Pardon me for asking, but...

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On 31/10/2012 3:37 PM, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> On 10/31/2012 04:21 PM, Lew wrote:
>> While Brooks called it an outrageous oversimplification, it turns out
>> to be neither outrageous nor overly simplified.
>>
> There's one exception, and I've seen it often enough. The emergency may
> simply be because the project, despite decent management and otherwise
> adequate staffing, runs into a showstopper problem in a single spot,
> say. Maybe a 3rd party library has behaviour not completely in keeping
> with its announced API - I've seen that more than once. Maybe the suite
> of defects associated with a given app server is presenting a really
> thorny obstacle for a specific scenario. Maybe - this is a big and
> common maybe - the team didn't know what they didn't know, at the
> fringes and niches of a given framework...at the 11th hour they discover
> that there's just that one last bit that they were unaware of.
>
> In all these circumstances a late addition of one or two SMEs can help,
> and often does.
>
> I don't think Brooks was talking about the late addition of expert
> technicians like this. But it is nonetheless a late addition of staff
> that does often help.

IIRC the explanation for "adding people to a late project makes it 
later" was that the original people lost more productivity in bringing 
the late people up to speed than the late people contributed. You've 
listed one (the only?) example that works because it avoids that 
fundamental problem: the new person only has to deal with a very narrow 
context, in which s/he is already expert.

So your example contradicts the cutesy summary phrase ("Brooks' Law"), 
but not Brooks' reasoning behind it.

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Pardon me for asking, but... pat.trainor@gmail.com - 2012-10-26 11:47 -0700
  Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-10-26 12:25 -0700
    Re: Pardon me for asking, but... David Lamb <dalamb@cs.queensu.ca> - 2012-10-26 17:15 -0400
      Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Joerg Meier <joergmmeier@arcor.de> - 2012-10-27 20:43 +0200
        Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-10-28 10:02 -0700
          Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-10-30 23:06 -0400
            Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-10-31 12:21 -0700
              Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom2@eastlink.ca> - 2012-10-31 16:37 -0300
                Re: Pardon me for asking, but... David Lamb <dalamb@cs.queensu.ca> - 2012-10-31 18:24 -0400
                Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-11-06 12:39 -0800
                Re: Pardon me for asking, but... bob smith <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-11-06 11:50 -0800
        Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-10-28 20:53 -0700
      Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-10-30 22:40 -0400
    Re: Pardon me for asking, but... pat.trainor@gmail.com - 2012-10-26 14:28 -0700
  Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-10-26 20:56 -0400
  Re: Pardon me for asking, but... bob smith <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-10-29 07:09 -0700
    Re: Pardon me for asking, but... David Lamb <dalamb@cs.queensu.ca> - 2012-10-29 10:38 -0400
      Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-10-29 09:43 -0700
  Re: Pardon me for asking, but... Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-10-31 16:26 -0700

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