"The Mythical Man-Month" is one of the seminal books in the field of software project management. It was written in 1975, based on experience from the 1960s. Is it even still relevant?

Turns out, it is. Technology may have changed dramatically but people have not. Managing software projects is about managing people, not bits, and creative people engaged in intellectual endeavors are notoriously hard to predict and manage. (Just ask my project manager.)

Fortunately, many of the lessons-learned Brooks' presents are still relevant today. Some are directly applicable ("adding people to a late project makes it later") while others are valid with a little interpretation. Still others fly in the face of conventional wisdom. What can we learn from that?

This session will present a modern overview of the ideas presented by Brooks and a look at what we can still learn from them even today.

Comments

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Giso at 19:33 on 7 Jun 2019

Nice talk. Good interaction with the audience. Great speaker.

Tom de Wit at 00:08 on 8 Jun 2019

Brilliant speaker. Brilliant subject. Very well designed and very clear slides and a good message, if you will.

Great talk. It's amazing to see how our industry solved a lot a problems before most of us were even born yet. Still we are struggling and trying to solve them again and again.

Brilliant talk and speaker! Very clear and true message. We can learn a lot from the past. Technology changes over time, humans not.

Dion Snoeijen at 17:15 on 8 Jun 2019

Great talk.

Fun talk. Interested in reading the mentioned books.

Alwin Drenth at 12:54 on 9 Jun 2019

Larry is a great speaker. No regret attending this one.

Although the context of this talk was not like brand new to me, the talk was done in easy-going and fun manner, which I really enjoyed.

De Fix at 11:00 on 11 Jun 2019

Good talk

Bas at 12:19 on 11 Jun 2019

Good talk, great speaker. Maybe it could reflect a bit more on the things we "still not have learned" or "still doing wrong".

Ronald D. at 14:57 on 11 Jun 2019

Great speaker and talk, it was very enjoyable and informative.

Just saw the talk in YouTube, and couldn't avoid coming to rate it here!
It's the best talk i've watched in a LONG time! And i watch a lot of them from several conferences!
I'm only sorry I didn't think of it!!
Everything in this talk is just perfect!
The only thing I think i could add was in the "Chirurgical Team" section: although I also haven't seen it implemented exactly as Brooks mentions, i can relate it to servant leadership, where the managers role is to take the burocracy out of the way so that the developers can focus on doing their job.

Final words: i was amazed by your talk! Well done Sir! Well done!