Just a few days ago, I happened to find this book in the library when I was looking for another book on Software Engineering. It attracts me first by its title, for I was wondering what ‘man-month’ is and why this book is there. Then I began to read.

The book tells the reader (particularly the product managers) the very basic principles to develop software. It first interests the reader by introducing the origin and the tough things of software development and then explains the ideas in detail smoothly. There are also thoughtful section headings referring to the real mythologies.

I have heard of this book years ago and have read a little, but I was young at that time. I did not realise how important it is to efficiently organise the human resource and timetable until I worked on a few projects with other people. It is true that adding more people is, for most of the time, not a practical solution to fix problems and finish the project faster. The scheduling does require experience and skills.

This book is old, and some ideas are outdated. The good news is that the newly published version includes additional chapters to meet the current situation. After all, we are using advanced programming languages now instead of paper tapes. The book could be old and outdated, but it is worth reading. I will keep them in mind when I do software engineering in the future.