Frederick P. Brooks

He was Corporate Project Manager for the System/360, including development of the System/360 computer family hardware and the decision to switch computer byte size from 6 to 8 bits.

His best-known books are

• The Mythical Man-Month (1975, 1995); 
• Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution (with G.A. Blaauw, 1997); and 
• The Design of Design (2010).

 Dr. Brooks has received the National Medal of Technology, the A.M. Turing award of the ACM, the Bower Award and Prize of the Franklin Institute, the John von Neumann Medal of the IEEE, and others. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering and of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.) and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Mythical Man-Month

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas in a new version.

1. a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; 
2. Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; 
3. a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet";[printed in Computer mag April 1987]
   "Essence and Accidents of SW Engineering"
4. today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."