Brooks' Law Explained to PMs with Burnt vs Perfectly Roasted Turkey

Description

A meme showing two roasted turkeys on ornate serving platters, with header text 'How to explain to a PM that adding 2 more devs won't make it 3 times faster'. Left turkey: Completely burnt and charred black, labeled '1 hour at 900F' - representing the result of trying to speed up development by throwing more resources at it. Right turkey: Perfectly golden-brown roasted, labeled '3 hour at 300F' - representing the result of taking the proper amount of time with the right resources. The cooking analogy brilliantly illustrates Brooks' Law from 'The Mythical Man-Month': you cannot make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant, and you cannot cook a turkey faster by cranking the temperature. Adding more developers to a late project makes it later, just as increasing oven temperature produces burnt results instead of faster cooking

Common Tags

ProjectManagement SoftwareEstimation TeamDynamics ResourceAllocation Management DeadlinePressure RealWorldAnalogies DeveloperFrustration ProductManagement SoftwareComplexity

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick PM: 'But what if we add a microwave?' Engineering: 'That's called outsourcing, and the turkey comes back as a Hot Pocket.'

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

PM: 'But what if we add a microwave?' Engineering: 'That's called outsourcing, and the turkey comes back as a Hot Pocket.'
@dwtexe 7mo

If one Construction worker can do a home in 4000 hours can 4000 construction worker csn make a home in 1 hour
1. @deadgnom32 7mo
  
  https://youtu.be/YtEQCOlGqr0?si=Owfv5N4cYNRxW1-s yes
2. @vadiohead 7mo
  
  Yes
@nyxiereal 7mo

Cook it at 54000°F for one minute
@badya 7mo

9 women, can deliver 9 children in 9 months which equals to 1 child per month
1. _ 7mo
  
  Here you're increasing throughput, but you can't do anything about latency
2. @farstars 7mo
  
  Don't let a PM read this. They'd gain the impression that they can deliver a milestone (/ child) per month.
  
  _ 7mo
  
  Well tbf you can, but only in different and unrelated projects
  
  @farstars 7mo
  
  PM detected. I'm sorry to disappoint, but each child is already a different unrelated project, yet each comes with an estimated delivery time frame of 9 month. You cannot speed things up.
3. @Agent1378 7mo
  
  Perfect example for latency vs. throughput