Book Review: 3/5 Impact On Me (Book By Frederick P. Brooks Jr.)
Read more about the book here
I've heard a lot about this book over the years and finally started reading it now. However, I found it challenging to extract value from it. The book's title directly addresses the misconceptions around measuring engineering work in man-months. But that is a mainstream concept that I'd read online about. My main issue with the book was its reliance on outdated programming examples like Fortran or IBM OS/360.
I appreciated its comparison between the coding needs of a large organization and a startup. This comparison cleared up the false belief that a small, lean startup team could produce the same amount of software as a large enterprise, but faster. Reading the book helped me understand that software for a large organization must accommodate far more use cases with extensive checks and balances. This requirement means the software needs to be larger, requiring a larger team. I agree that with a bigger team comes the trade-off of increased communication overhead, but it's necessary. This insight has motivated me to look for more recent books on the subject - which have recent examples.
I understand that technical leaders should be given the same importance as engineering managers. I liked its explanation that both roles, whether implementing code as an engineer or designing the system as an architect, require creativity and autonomy.