This chapter was added to the 20-year anniversary edition of 1995 and is a transcript of a paper Brooks wrote back in 1986 titled "No Silver Bullet - Essence and Accident in Software Engineering". In it, Brooks addresses the essential tasks of building software.| @hgraca
Documentation is needed. Others need to understand what our application is, what it does how it does it, how it behaves. The application code, as well, needs to be understood, not only by the machine but also by the next developer reading it. We need to document all the way from a faraway view of the system to a detailed view of the system. Then the question is: What and how to document?| @hgraca
Plenty of projects, if not the vast majority, end up getting delayed... Some more than twice the initial estimated time and cost. This happened up until 1986, when the book was published, but it still happens today. I feel it is, sadly, very common. But how does this happen? How can we prevent it?| @hgraca
The challenge is not simply to build something that "works". It is to build something that really works in the way the end user needs it to work, with conceptual consistency, with minimal technical bugs, and that can be maintained and extended throughout a long life.| @hgraca
The work quality and efficiency of a crafter depends a lot on the tools at hand. In this chapter, Brooks makes a case for this statement validity for software developers as well and gives a list of…| @hgraca