Adding More People Makes Your Project Late

 

One of the things I'm constantly surprised by are project managers and writers who seem to ignore The Mythical Man-Month and Brooks' Law.

"adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" -Fred Brooks

Don't Call People "Resources"

They are people. They make up teams.

I've been guilty of this, but maybe calling people "resources" in your schedules and plans has a negative impact.

People aren't widgits, and teams aren't perfect systems where you can add another widget and get everything done that much more quickly.

I think using the term "resources" instead of "people" may allow tool-savvy project managers to get more and more detached from the reality of their project team and the work to be done.

You Can't Add People Like Widgets

I hear it more often than I would like.

Project managers see a shortfall in the amount of staffing available on a particular part of a project, which is going to cause missing a milestone date.

Then the exclamation "I can just take .2 of an FTE from John Doe down the hall and it all works out on paper!" (FTE = Full Time Equivalent)

Brilliant.

You know, there are some cases where you can do that. Perhaps the person has previous experience with the product your team is developing, or the type of work is generic enough that someone from outside the team can come in and pick it up without training.

But more often this is a big mistake. You are going to leach out .2 FTE from your current team (maybe more with multiple people helping the new guy) in order to get him up to speed.

So unless you are going to have a long-term commitment from a new team member and have considered the time and effort involved with bringing someone up to speed, their lowered productivity level until they are fully immersed, etc. don't even think about adding new staff.

Especially not temporary staff.