The Mythical Man-Month

From his years managing IBM's System/360 computer family and its OS/360 software, Frederick P. Brooks Jr. drew a set of essays on the human side of software engineering. The best known, Brooks's law, holds that putting more programmers on a software project that is already late only delays it further, because newcomers must be trained and each extra person multiplies the channels of communication. Other essays cover the second-system effect, the case for prototyping and the need for conceptual integrity in a design. The anniversary edition adds four chapters, among them a reprint of No Silver Bullet and Brooks's later view of his original claims, and the essays speak to anyone managing complex projects.

It appears on a list of books Jeff Bezos thinks everyone should read, noted for arguing that small groups of engineers handle complex software better than large ones. An account of Amazon's rise credits it as the thinking behind the company's two pizza teams.