“The Mythical Man-month” teaches the management lessons learned from the creation of the operating system for the IBM System 360, released in 1964. This was a truly historic undertaking, and it had its share of troubles in spite of the excellence of the work and people.

From the book:

“The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away.

You will do that.

The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway,

or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers.”