The Mythical Man-Month of IBM’s OS/360 Software

The Mythical Man-Month is a concept developed by Fred Brooks while he was tasked with guiding a team of programmers to develop a new operating system dubbed the “360.”


Fred Brooks Software Programmer for IBM's OS 360 Project

Fred Brooks Software Programmer for IBM’s OS 360 Project



Fred realized that adding more programmers because the project had fallen behind and was late, did not actually help get it done sooner, and actually caused further delay. He wrote about this concept in his book “The Mythical Man-Month” which was later named “Brooks law.”

IBM decided to discontinue production of OS/360 due to the hardware having memory limitations as well as the development taking much longer than anticipated.

IBM OS 360 Software

Many of the structures, techniques and scheduling in the current software development environment is passed down from this epic failure in software programming.

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Written by: Jophiel Silvestrone

Jophiel Silvestrone has written 326 posts in the Tech Blog.

Jophiel grew up on a ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana near Chico Hot Springs. Working on the ranch instilled work ethic and self motivation. Filled with this drive, Jophiel started mowing the local school's yards twice a month throughout the summers, at the age of 12. He moved to Billings in 2004, where he has been deeply involved in the local business community ever since. A serial entrepreneur, Jophiel has ran multiple businesses in our local community. The first business, a janitorial and carpet cleaning company, founded in 2005, has employed over 50 locals. Moving on to the media industry, Jophiel and several partners founded Green Directory Montana in the spring of 2007. Green Directory's sustainability ranking software awarded points based on sustainable or "green" actions. These points counted towards a business's total "Green Score," which in turn ranked them against other businesses in their category and throughout the entire site. It also featured a limited edition print version distributed annually. A business acquisition allowed Jophiel to focus on new projects, and a few close business colleagues and Jophiel started Rocky Mountain Mr. & Ms. Magazine, a lifestyle publication for men and women in the Magic City. After a year and a half at the helm of RM3 Magazine, the business was purchased. He now runs a web development company SkyPoint Studios and fathers his son Jaoquin, who plays football, basketball, soccer, and is learning snowboarding from his dad. Recently, has expanded to locations in Havasu, Arizona & Vegas. SkyPoint Studios is a market leader in both Billings & Havasu and Jophiel is working on building that same level of market dominance in Vegas. Specialties: Extensive experience in online and offline business. Especially savvy at WordPress, and operate several sites, one example is the blog: skypointwebdesignbillingsmontana.com/tech-blog. Check out skypointwebdesignbillingsmontana.com for the latest projects from SkyPoint Studios.

2 replies
  1. Kelly Hubbard
    Kelly Hubbard says:

    The Super Nintendo era was such a great time to grow up in the former United States of America. The early 90’s was a great time to be a kid! It really surprises me how 16-bit game design has not caught on like the over used retro 8-bit has. I was hoping games would start to graduate to the 16-bit era of nostalgia but it has not. Hopefully soon!

    Reply

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