Marc Hedlund tells the story of how to get the message across about late projects, about how to convey Brooks’s Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” It’s well told, so I’ll let him tell you…
Of course, some companies take people off a late project which doesn’t exactly help. Or pass the whole project on to another team in addition to their current work.
I suppose the trick is to add the people _before_ the project is late, ideally at the start, but that would require accurate estimation…
You raise an interesting point about taking people off a late project. While Brooks’s Law states that “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later” it seems the managers you describe think that the inverse is also true, and that removing manpower from a late software project brings it in on time.
Very interesting.
