Today I learned a new concept in software development called Brooks’s Law. It says something that sounds strange at first:

Adding more people to a late project makes it even later.

At the beginning I thought, how can more help make things worse? But the idea makes sense.

When new people join a project, they need time to understand the code, the context, the decisions, the problems, everything. And the developers who are already on the team need to stop their work to explain all of this. Communication grows, coordination gets harder, and progress slows down.

So instead of speeding things up, the project becomes heavier.

The lesson is simple: more people is not always the solution. Sometimes the real solution is reducing scope, improving communication, or solving the blockers instead of adding more hands.

Learning this helped me see team productivity in a different way. It’s not about quantity, it’s about clarity