Good management and development practices also help to minimize the impact of Brooks' law.

Brooks' law is often cited to justify why projects keep being late, despite management efforts.

However, there are some key points in Brooks' law that allow exceptions and open the door for possible solutions.

Brooks' Law, " adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," is why.

This approach sought to defeat Brooks' law by requiring all programmers to communicate through the manager rather than directly.

Note: since man-years are not interchangeable with years, Brooks' Law applies:

This idea is known as Brooks' law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping.

In such a case, Brooks' law ("adding manpower to a late software project makes it later") surely applies, for exactly the reasons that Brooks enumerates: time for the new developers to become productive and increased communication overhead.