I found myself googling for Fred Brooks earlier today (after fellow blosxom blogger Charlie Stross called him "Ted Brooks" and I was making sure I wasn't crazy in correcting him). That googling led me to Ed Yourdon's site, a developer, consultant and speaker on software issues of whom I had previously never heard. On one page he was discussing Brooks' Mythical Man-Month, which is the one I found. By browsing around the site, I got interested in Ed Yourdon's stuff. One very interesting looking book is his Death March which he is updating and has portions online. It is all about those kinds of projects which are familiar to some of us, the kind where the esimation process was done poorly or not at all and now the deadline must be met even though it is unrealistic. When the only way to achieve the goal is for everyone to work 100 hours a week, you are in a death march. For extra SFnal dorkiness, he opens his introduction with a quote from Jubal Harshaw, in Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. He appears to be a true blue SF fan. I'll be reading his working chapters over the next few days.