The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Even if you haven't heard of The Mythical Man-Month it's almost impossible not to have felt its impact in the software industry. Its core tenet, Brooks' Law, that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," is practically gospel. As is another of his lessons: that in software development there is no such thing as a silver bullet. Brooks skill is to allow the reader to understand why these problems, which seem so obvious in the abstract, nonetheless remain a continuing menace to software projects.