职场定律 | 布鲁克定律(Brooks’s Law)

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布鲁克定律(Brooks’s Law)

布鲁克斯法则(Brook’s Law)简单理解就是:向进度落后的IT项目增加人手,只会使项目更加落后。具体解释及论证如下:

1、解释

布鲁克斯法则(Brook’s Law)由被认为是“IBM 360系统之父”的Frederick P. Brooks,Jr提出,也叫Brooks法则是指一种实践,应用全面、严密的方法来描述组织之流程、信息系统、人员和组织子单元的当前或未来结构,以便其与组织的核心目标和战略方向保持一致。
布鲁克斯法则是指投入更多的人来开发一个紧急的项目只会让进度更慢。更多并不意味着更好,有些事最好是一个人来干。

经典意见:
向进度落后的项目中增加人手,只会使项目更加落后。例如“三个和尚没水吃,厨师太多做坏汤。”

2、论证

从PMP角度来做个论证,下图为项目团队成长规律图。

从项目管理角度来说,新成员加入或老成员离开团队需重新开始。
假设当前项目团队状态处于“规范“状态,此时增加一个新成员,团队归位到”形成“状态,重新打磨,从而增加项目周期

说明:
假设新成员加入带来的磨合期增加并不能覆盖其带来的项目赶工时间。

 

Adding human resources to a late software development project makes it later.

软件开发后期,添加人力只会使项目开发得更慢。

This law suggests that in many cases, attempting to accelerate the delivery of a project which is already late, by adding more people, will make the delivery even later. Brooks is clear that this is an over-simplification, however, the general reasoning is that given the ramp-up time of new resources and the communication overheads, in the immediate short-term velocity decreases. Also, many tasks may not be divisible, i.e. easily distributed between more resources, meaning the potential velocity increase is also lower.

The common phrase in delivery “Nine women can’t make a baby in one month” relates to Brooks’ Law, in particular, the fact that some kinds of work are not divisible or parallelisable.

This is a central theme of the book ‘The Mythical Man Month‘.

See also: