Frederick P. Brooks wrote the classic 1975 book The Mythic Man-Month which basically says that you can't keep throwing manpower at a software project without reaching a point at which the more people are added to the project, the more it will fall behind schedule due to the increasing "overhead" of communication and coordination.
Stated as "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," it has come to be known as Brook's Law.
In that book, he also writes:
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one mind, or a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
In the 1990's Brook's Law has been challenged by the rise of the Open Source software movement. See Linus' Law.
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