Brooks's Law

Organizational Design: Choosing What Will Be Easy to Build

An org chart looks like a diagram of authority. It works as a map of which conversations are cheap — and that is what ends up shaping the product.

Dunbar's Number: The Limit Is Attention, Not Memory

You can recognise thousands of faces and actively maintain far fewer relationships. The famous figure of 150 is contested — the underlying constraint is not.

Brooks's Law: Adding People to a Late Project Makes It Later

The obvious response to a slipping deadline is more people. Output falls first, because the only people who can train them are the ones already behind — and coordination grows with the square of the team.

Software Engineering: Code Is Read Far More Than It Is Written

Most engineering time goes on code that already exists. Once you accept that, the practices that look like fussiness turn out to be straightforward economics.