Laws of Software Engineering 📔
The book began as a document I wrote over the years. During my 20+ year career in Tech, I saw the same things happening at companies with different technologies and teams. I wrote down what I saw. I learned about Galls Law from a project that did not work out. Brooks’ Law was observed in a team that grew larger, but everything became slower. Goodhart’s Law arose from a time when we met all our goals, yet the results were no better. They have been even worse.
Later, I met engineers who had figured out the same things. Most of them learned these lessons the hard way, as I did. They had a project that failed, a team that got tired, or a codebase that was a mess. This is how engineers usually learn these lessons because no one tells them. It is true, and it costs a lot.
This book is a list of what I learned.
This issue covers 20 software engineering laws. My book covers 56 laws across architecture, people, time, quality, scale, code, and decision-making.
Each chapter discusses what the law says, where it comes from, when it applies, and what it looks like in a project. Some chapters also include connecting ideas such as The Two-Pizza Rule, The Cobra Effect, and Impostor Syndrome.
This book is something you can keep at your desk and look at when you need help.
Forewords are written by Dr. Rebecca Parsons, CTO Emerita at Thoughtworks, and Addy Osmani, Engineering Director at Google Cloud AI. Reviewed by 20 engineers and leaders from Google, Amazon, Uber, Oracle, Yelp, Nutanix, and CodeScene.
Laws of Software Engineering website 🏛️
In addition to the book, there is an accompanying website with information on all the laws. lawsofsoftwareengineering.com has 63+ laws and principles everyone should know, organized so you can find one fast.
What you can do on the site:
- Filter by category: Architecture, Teams, Planning, Quality, Scale, Design, Decisions
- Filter by experience level (Junior, Mid-Level, Senior). The same law reads differently when you're three years in versus fifteen years in.
- Each law on its own page
