Quote

It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

Fred Brooks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Fred Brooks
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: April 19
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Mathematician
Software Engineer
University Teacher
Durham
North Carolina
Frederick Phillips Brooks
Jr.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Frederick Phillips Fred Brooks
Jr
Frederick P. Brooks
Frederick Phillips
Difficult
Plausible
Jobs
Derived
Vigorous
Certified
Littles
Supported
Quantitative
Little
Managers
Hunches
Make
Data
Risking
Defense
Estimate
Method
Chiefly

More quotes by Fred Brooks

Image
Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
Fred Brooks
Image
Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.
Fred Brooks
Image
Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
Fred Brooks
Image
The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.
Fred Brooks
Image
You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.
Fred Brooks
Image
The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status.
Fred Brooks
Image
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
Fred Brooks
Image
The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.
Fred Brooks
Image
Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
Fred Brooks
Image
We tend to blame the physical media for most of our implementation difficulties for the media are not ours in the way the ideas are, and our pride colors our judgement.
Fred Brooks
Image
Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.
Fred Brooks
Image
Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
Fred Brooks
Image
More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.
Fred Brooks
Image
Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
Fred Brooks
Image
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.
Fred Brooks
Image
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts they'll be obvious.
Fred Brooks
Image
Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
Fred Brooks
Image
I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
Fred Brooks
Image
A scientist builds in order to learn an engineer learns in order to build.
Fred Brooks
Image
The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.
Fred Brooks