Fred Brooks Quotes

Fred Brooks — American Scientist born on April 19, 1931,

Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. is an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month. Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999... (wikipedia)

There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial chance of introducing another.