Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
organizational authority of the traditional manager. The chief program-
mer was both a technical genius and expert administrator. Programming
aptitude could not be abstracted from its embodiment in particular indi-
viduals; skilled programmers were anything but replaceable components
of an automated software factory. In the elite surgical team model, the
contributions of talented professionals far outweighed those provided by
traditional management techniques or development methodologies.
Besides endowing computer programmers with considerable institu-
tional power,
The Mythical Man-Month
reinforced the notion that pro-
gramming was an exceptional activity, unlike any other engineering or
manufacturing discipline. Brooks's suggestion that programming was
akin to poetry strongly implied that programming was not an activity
that could be readily systematized. What Brooks proposed was the adop-
tion of useful tools and techniques, not some overarching methodology.
As he later declared in a famous article titled “No Silver Bullet,” although
the management of large programming projects could be improved incre-
mentally, there were no easy solutions to be derived from the lessons of
traditional manufacturing.
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Like the hierarchical systems model, the CPT was intimately linked
to specifi c techniques and technologies. Since all major decisions relating
to both design and implementation had to be made by a single super-
programmer, the CPT approach effectively demanded the adoption of
top-down development techniques. Top-down programming was one of
the foundational principles of the structured programming approach to
software engineering advocated by many academic computer scientists
in this period. The essence of top-down programming was the concept
of abstraction: by proceeding step by step from general design goals to
the specifi c implementation details, a systems architect could individually
manage the otherwise-unmanageable complexity of a large software
development project. The use of top-down programming techniques
enabled the authoritarian chief programmer to maintain the architectural
integrity that Brooks believed was so central to the design of useful and
beautiful software programs. The heyday of the structured programming
movement was coincident with the publication of
The Mythical
Man-Month
, and the attractiveness of the surgical team approach to
management was reinforced by, and helped to reinforce, the popularity
of structured programming as a development technology.
In addition to borrowing heavily from the established techniques and
technologies of structured programming, the CPT model also helped to
defi ne technological innovations of its own. The development support
