software project | Booqs.com

"There isn’t one. No one person understands it all." I knew then that the project was doomed—the system would collapse of its own weight.

Frederick P. Brooks

I strongly believe the way forward is to embrace and develop the Spiral Model. I would suggest punctuating the spiral with explicit contracting points, augmented with clear specification of what can be contracted, with what certainties, and with what explicit distribution of risk.

Frederick P. Brooks

Clearly, it is the necessity for contracts, whether within an organization or between organizations, that forces the too-early binding of goals, requirements, constraints. Everyone recognizes the fact that these must later be changed.

Frederick P. Brooks

As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

John A. Stankovic, Krithi Ramamritham

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

How does a project get one year late? One day at a time.

Frederick P. Brooks