Fair enough.

The original reaction for that pathology is "The Mythical Man-Month", it's what started everything. From my point of view, we're still man-monthin'.

The Agile folks just translated a personal reflection from Fred Brooks into a culture (then some companies made it into a cult).

Anyway. In your opinion, what the pathologies for _this_ time would be?

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drewcoo 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

> The original reaction for that pathology is "The Mythical Man-Month", it's what started everything.

In software, Gerald Weinberg was writing about how to organize and optimize this stuff at least a decade before Brooks.

And Edwards Deming's work led to a lot of agile ideas. That strain of thinking is traceable at least back to the Napoleonic-era's Prussian artillery. The mythical man month isn't really a software problem; it's a human organization problem.

	▲	dllthomas 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		I very much agree that Brooks didn't "start everything" but I think he brought value to the discussion of those human organization problems in the context of software. Weinberg got there earlier but I feel like I personally got more of value from Brooks. Obviously YMMV.

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dllthomas 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

I think there's some space between MMM and agile and the former (as problem statement more than proposed solutions) holds up better. It's been a while since I last read it, though.

> Anyway. In your opinion, what the pathologies for _this_ time would be?

That's certainly an interesting question; I don't have a ready answer.