Comment by ken

> Fred Brooks and Jerry Weinberg pretty much nailed down all the essential issues in IT project and personnel management more than 30 years ago; yet, amazingly, the problems haven’t all gone away! There is a profound lack of professional and institutional memory in IT;

Brooks also used his analysis to give a solution -- which (AFAICT) nobody has ever implemented. The problem isn't lack of 'memory'. His ideas weren't adopted even when they were new. It's amazing that after 45 years we're still pointing to this book as a must-read which correctly explained the problems of our industry, yet managers universally ignore the chapters which explain what to do instead. I don't see that happening in other fields.

> almost everyone who writes about IT project/personnel management (myself included) is looking for new ways to cast or explain the core issues in a touching hope that maybe this time someone will actually listen and fix them.

Good luck with that. Brooks' book is sitting on every manager's desk in the world, and he couldn't get them to read and follow it. Another blog isn't going to help. Things are only going to change when the industry has a "come-to-Jesus moment" -- like if software starts killing people and the government steps in and says "hey maybe you should all be required to adopt NASA's methodologies".