jmpnadeau's blog

In software engineering, when schedule slips, it can be tempting to redirect or add new resources to an important project. However, most of the time, boosting the number of resources in a project’s late stage has exactly the opposed effect: it takes more time. This principle is called Brooks’ law.

Adding more people in a project won’t necessarily make it happen faster. Software engineering is complex. First, it definitely takes some amount of time to the newcomer to understand and get used to the existing environment (existing code, development environment and most importantly, the team). Second, increasing resources also increase communication overhead. The information flow must go through all team members, in a clear and efficient way. Finally, you might also drain your existing resources’ energy and time by asking them to train and to coach the others.

For late software development projects, sometimes finding better ways to do more with less, simplifying processes and eliminating any nuisance to the team is better than giving more.

I was reading when I stumbled upon what they call the “Occam’s Razor”.

The concept comes from and English logician, William of Ockham. Simply put, Occam’s Razor suggests that when analyzing a problem, all unnecessary details should be discarded so everyone can focus on the core of the problem. Also, options that lack simplicity should be discarded. This suggests that the simpler solution might be the better one (and yes, this method has it’s limits).

Reading on the topic, I discovered that this method is commonly used as a part of the scientific method and that Avinash Kaushik likes the concept too.

What do you think?

It’s easy to fall in the trap. Precise numbers help others trust that you are accurate.

However, precision is not accuracy. Someone can say, “Your package will arrive in 5 days, 2 hours and 15 seconds.”. That is pretty precise, but it may not be accurate. On the other side, “Your package will arrive in 5 days.” is not very precise, but it can be accurate.

An accurate answer or estimate is, most of the time, more precious than a precise one.