Why managing software projects will always be hard.

Sources • Article cited from: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html

• Images from: • http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fred_Brooks.jpg • http://www.gratisography.com

„No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of

Software Engineering“ by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Quotes taken from the classic article by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

„The familiar software project […] is usually innocent and straightforward, but is capable of becoming a monster of missed schedules, blown budgets, and flawed products.“ Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

„I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of the conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.“

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

„The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.“ Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

„From the complexity comes the difficulty of communication among team members, which leads to product flaws, cost overruns, schedule delays.“ Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

… creates the tremendous learning and understanding burden that makes personnel turnover a disaster.

… makes overview hard, thus impeding conceptual integrity.

… makes it hard to find and control all the loose ends.

Complexity…