Hi,
Usually if there is a development task that takes 4 days, if you put 2 developers on it then it does not necessarily halve the overall development time i.e. instead of 2 days it will take a bit more than 2 days due to things like developer discussions, technical meetings, disagreements, dependencies etc. What is the "technical term" to describe this principle?
I guess this may be more of a project management question than a web development question.
Any help will be appreciated.
Cheers.
"The Mythical Man-Month" is the most used phrase applied to the concept, after a title of the famous Brooks's book which discusses it in detail.
The concepts is usually more pronounced/applicable in the latter stages of the project and when the amount of people is >2 (communication overhead between just 2 developers is not that much of a deal and MAY actually shorted the development by allowing clearer thinking from each one as results of the discussion - however, with growing # of developers, communication grows O(n^2).
What you're talking about sounds similar to Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. As the wikipedia article points out, the phrasing is a gross oversimplification, probably meant to be provocative, but it captures the general issue from your question.
Note that he coined the law in 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. It's amazing how much he wrote then that still applies to us today.
Many good information can be taken from the "I need this baby in a month - send me nine women!" discussion.
Thanks for the responses but you are all referring to a principle that applies to a project already late. I am referring to any stage in the project. Perhaps there is no such "law" or "term" that has been formally defined and it is one of those things that we are all informally aware of during projects without coining a term for it.......perhaps.
Isn't this simply a variation of the "law of diminishing returns"? I suspect that would be the technical phrase you need.