Essay RFC delayed.

[Jacques Chester]

Hello all, again.

>Jacques Chester wrote:
>
>> [...] Brook's Law [...]
>
>BTW, it's Brooks's law (not Brook's law or Brooks' law); the
>current draft consistently gets this wrong.

Bugger. I spotted this myself at one point, whereupon it
was promptly forgotten. It's rude for me to do so, as the
same rule of grammar applies to my name (Jacques/Jacques').

>> >Projects
>> >
>> >So what are projects, and what are their factors?  Brooks
>> >example can be characterised as a project with two factors,
>> >being programmers and managers.  If we hold managers constant,
>> >and increase programmers, LODR tells us that productivity
>> >will increase less each time another programmer is added.
>
>Actually, Brooks's law says that productivity will *decrease*
>after a certain point, not just increase less.  With the n**2
>communications costs, eventually you reach a point where
>adding resources is bad not just relatively but absolutely.

I no longer have Mythical Man-Month on me, so what follows
may be wrong.

But what you have described is the same as the LODR. After
certain point, not only does the marginal output become
negative, but the average total output noses over and
begins to fall. Indeed, a better (and rarely-used) name for
the LODR is "the Law of Increasing Costs".

JC.