Guilherme CalobaProduction Engineer| PETROBRASRio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
It is another year and things keep happening the same old manner. In "The Mythical Man-Month", Fred Brooks conceived the amazing Brooks Law, where he says that "adding people to a late project makes it even later". I've seen it happen a lot of times, the new people need to get "up to speed" and those who should be developing the work get busy training or socializing with the newbies. So here is my question: you should never add more people to a project once it begins? Should you limit that to moments of change or project approval, for instance? It seems to me that this law should be less damaging in Agile environment, is it true?
The key is the word "late" in Brooks' Law as it highlighted the law of diminishing returns tangoing with the challenges of the N*(N-1)/2 formula of communication channels.
It is normal that most projects will follow a bell curve like staffing model so adding people when they can effectively contribute is essential, but throwing people or money at a variance won't guarantee it will get resolved.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Guilherme CalobaProduction Engineer| PETROBRASRio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Thank you, Kiron! Do you think it is better in an agile environment? I don't think you would bring people in during a sprint, would you? Possibly it would be done between sprints, minimizing the time spent by the team "training" and the new people "getting acquainted" to the project environment. Saving Changes...
If your agile delivery approach is sprint-based then no, I would not change team composition mid-sprint, but there could certainly be times when the team grows or shrinks before a sprint. For example, if during a retrospective the team identified that they were lacking a particular skillset and if someone was available with that skillset, they could be added to the team at the start of the next sprint.
What is important is that they are properly onboarded to the culture and practices of the team and that they have someone acting as their buddy for the first few days at least so that they can quickly become a contributing member of the team. It's also important to ensure we don't grow the agile team beyond an efficient size (5-12 maximum).
"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near."
