Brooks described the Surgical Team methodology, where one senior tackled the most complex tasks including design, the next senior people were helping with complex tasks and essentially "apprenticing" - with expectation that they will move on to become most senior person on a new team - plus a group of junior programmers took care of the simple "toil", while a group of supports (technical writers for documentation, tool makers, etc) together provided necessary cross-cutting skills.
This was modeled in the essay after "surgical team", with the most senior programmer being the "head surgeon" leading the operation, his direct assistants who could have major tasks delegated, and the juniors who could take on simple but still important tasks. (anaesthesiologist would probably be example of the cross-cutting support task)
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Brooks described the Surgical Team methodology, where one senior tackled the most complex tasks including design, the next senior people were helping with complex tasks and essentially "apprenticing" - with expectation that they will move on to become most senior person on a new team - plus a group of junior programmers took care of the simple "toil", while a group of supports (technical writers for documentation, tool makers, etc) together provided necessary cross-cutting skills.
This was modeled in the essay after "surgical team", with the most senior programmer being the "head surgeon" leading the operation, his direct assistants who could have major tasks delegated, and the juniors who could take on simple but still important tasks. (anaesthesiologist would probably be example of the cross-cutting support task)