Why Adding More People to a Late Project Makes It Later
“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” This counterintuitive statement, known as Brooks’ Law, comes from Fred Brooks’ seminal book “The Mythical Man Month,” published in 1975. Despite being nearly 50 years old, this principle remains painfully relevant in today’s consulting projects.
As a consultant, I’ve witnessed this scenario play out repeatedly: a project falls behind schedule, and the immediate reaction is to add more people to “catch up.” What follows is almost always a disaster.
The Enduring Wisdom of Brooks’ Law
The core insight of Brooks’ work is that software development, and by extension complex consulting projects, doesn’t scale linearly with the number of people involved. When a project is behind schedule, our instinct to throw more bodies at the problem often backfires spectacularly.
There are several reasons why this happens:
- New team members require time to understand the project, its codebase, and business context
- Existing team members must divert attention to onboard newcomers, reducing their productivity
- Communication overhead grows exponentially as team size increases (with n people, potential communication channels = n(n-1)/2)
- Some tasks are inherently sequential and cannot be parallelized (“nine women can’t make a baby in one month”)
The Consulting Context: A Perfect Storm
In consulting environments, these challenges become even more pronounced. I once joined a troubled ERP implementation that had ballooned from an initial team of seven consultants to over twenty. The project was six months behind schedule and hemorrhaging money. The client’s response? Add more consultants.
By the time I arrived, team meetings required a conference room designed for forty people, and simple decisions took weeks to finalize as they bounced between various specialists and workstreams.
What makes consulting particularly vulnerable to the Mythical Man Month trap:
- Client expectations that equate headcount with value and progress
- Fixed deadlines with contractual penalties looming over every decision
- Knowledge silos concentrated in a few key individuals
- Billing pressure that requires justification for high consultant costs
A More Effective Approach
Rather than reflexively adding more people when projects fall behind, effective consulting leaders should consider alternative approaches:
Ruthlessly prioritize scope. Focus on what truly matters for initial delivery and defer less critical elements to later phases. This builds client confidence while creating breathing room for addressing remaining requirements.
Improve processes before adding people. On a recent cloud migration project, we discovered that environment provisioning was creating a massive bottleneck. Rather than adding six more engineers as the client requested, we brought in one DevOps specialist who automated the infrastructure deployment process. This single intervention unblocked the entire team and accelerated delivery more effectively than a team expansion would have.
Add specialists strategically. When additional resources are truly necessary, bring in experts for specific problems rather than general resources. Consider creating focused “SWAT teams” that can tackle targeted issues without disrupting the core team’s momentum.
Managing Client Expectations
Perhaps the most crucial skill for consulting leaders is managing client expectations around Brooks’ Law. This requires transparent communication about the realities of team scaling and presenting data-driven alternatives to simply adding headcount.
On that troubled ERP project I mentioned earlier, we eventually:
- Reduced the team to twelve key members
- Clarified decision-making authority
- Implemented a more focused scope
The result? The project was delivered within four months, faster than the projected timeline with the larger team.
The Timeless Truth
“The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.” This memorable quote from Brooks captures an essential truth: some things simply take time. In consulting, as in software development, the best leaders understand this reality and focus on working smarter rather than just throwing more bodies at the problem.
The next time you face a project falling behind schedule, resist the temptation to immediately expand the team. Instead, remember Brooks’ wisdom and look for the strategic interventions that will truly accelerate delivery. Your clients, your team, and your project outcomes will all benefit from this more thoughtful approach.