The Mythical Man-Month - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

The Mythical Man-Month - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
Dreaming in Code - Joel on Software

• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.


• A single chief architect (or a small number of architects), acting on the user’s behalf, decides what goes in the system and what stays out. A “super cool” idea by someone may not be included if it does not fit seamlessly with the overall system design. In fact, to ensure a user-friendly system, a system may deliberately provide fewer features than it is capable of. The point is that if a system is too complicated to use, then many of its features will go unused because no one has the time to learn how to use them.
  
• When designing a new kind of system, a team will design a throw-away system (whether it likes it or not).


• Software is invisible. Therefore, many things only become apparent once a certain amount of work has been done on a new system, allowing a user to experience it. This experience will yield insights, which will change a user’s needs or the perception of the user’s needs. The system will therefore need to be changed in order to fulfill the changed requirements of the user.