Brook's law: "adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Also called the mythical man-month" (McShane/Von Glinow, Organizational Behavior,2010). Of course this rule applies to other projects as well, and the reason is the existence of process losses (time for communication in this case). However, it is not absolutely true, because, as you can read here it depends on when you will add manpower, how many people you will add and how experienced the new stuff is.
Reading about this law, I recollected a champions league football game and an old goalkeeper's comments on it. Chelsea was desperate for a goal to get qualified and for the last ten minutes coach Mourinho chose to play with four strikers. Brook's law worked fine and Chelsea couldn't get coordinated to score. What impressed me was the simplicity of the old greek goalkeeper, Giorgos Mirtsos, in describing Brook's law: "the flood system"!
