Brooks's law: why adding people makes a late project later
Onboarding: why new people slow a team down first
Four skilled developers join a late software project. That week, the team builds less than the week before, and nobody is slacking.
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1
On Monday, four skilled developers join your team of three, and they have built apps like this one before. Never this one, though, and it is full of decisions they don't know about yet.
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2
Someone has to teach them the goals, the plan and how each part works, and only Miva and Rono know all that. Getting new people ready to work on a project is called onboarding.
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3
So this week, Miva and Rono teach, and the four new people learn. Only you build, and the app grows less than last week, when you were three.
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4
A few weeks later, onboarding is over and all seven of you build the app. Yet each of you gets less done in a week than when you were three. What grows every time a person joins?
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Quick check
A restaurant hires two cooks the day before a big dinner.
Show the answer
The cooks who already work there. They stop to show the new two the kitchen, the menu and the recipes: that is onboarding.
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Go further
The name for the slow start, and how Brooks saw the teaching.