The Mythical Man Month

After reading the book the Goal , I went after the next reading, and I was recommended to read The Mythical Man-Month, from Fred Brooks. This book is a computer science class, which I didn’t know yet, that describes the software development life cycle in the 70s.

The book’s main subject is told at the title: the mythical man-month. Man-month is a productivity metric like the ones that are used today, such as points, t-shirts size or whatever that is being used. The argument is the metric is failed and number of tasks, line of codes or features developed by someone aren’t constant between projects.

The theory of constraints

At the end of 2023, my squad started its most important project. I assumed the project leadership role, organizing the project, coordinating the meetings, the release process, etc. At the first months, the project went well, as we took some hard decisions, proved a couple of concepts, and started the rollout for the first phase.

However, I always felt that I was holding the team back and being a bottleneck in the whole team. At a 1x1 with the head of the area, I told him about my frustration and got this answer back: