CS190 - Mythical Man Month essay
By: tmohamed

In the Mythical Man Month, Brooks places a lot of emphasis on the idea of the
“conceptual integrity” of a piece of software; he claims that it is the most
important consideration in system design. He asserts the importance of the ease
of use of a system and explains the role of the uniformity of the finished
product. A reduced feature set based on one set of design ideas is better, he
says, than a product containing many good, but “independent and uncoordinated
ideas.” 

In order to create this integrated and uniform feel to the product, Brooks
talks about using external specifications that eventually act as constraints at
the implementation stage. He assures that constraints at the architectural
level still allow for ample creative flexibility during implementation. 

I agree with Brooks that it is effective to have a list of external
specifications at the design level, but I do not completely agree with the
rigidity of its constraints. My take home lesson that I presented together with
my specifications was that it is important to have a component in the system
that complements the base spec, but if removed will not hurt it. The timeline
and scheduling of a project development cycle is usually an estimate based on
previous experience, it is therefore possible that integration and testing can
occur ahead or behind schedule. It is therefore advantageous to have a
component of the program that can either be added or omitted from the final
product and that won’t undermine the initial requirements.

Having this type of optional component can be good because it can help reduce
what Brooks calls the “Second-System effect.” This is a scenario where a
program architect has complex, embellished features that he purposely does not
include in his first set of specifications so as not to appear over-ambitious.
These features that were sidetracked later appear in future releases of the
product. This practice leads to a pile up of unfeasible and unnecessary
features in newer versions of the product. Having some scalability or
expandability built into the first release would allow the possible
implementation of some if not all features that were initially deemed as
optional.