Chinese Army technique ⇝

Mongolian Hordes technique

<programming, jargon>

(Or "Chinese Army technique") Assigning a large number of inexperienced programmers to a job which would better performed by a few skilled ones. The term was first used by Dr. Fred Brooks in his book "The Mythical Man-Month", Chapter 3.

According to Dr. Brooks, he had in mind the vision of the Mongol Hordes sweeping across Asia and Europe when he created the term.

[Jargon File]

Last updated: 1996-06-20

Nearby terms:

monad ♦ monadic ♦ Mongolian Hordes technique ♦ moniter ♦ monitor ♦ monkey, scratch

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Anonymous · 1 days ago

I'm trying to find the source of the Mongolian Hordes reference. I've looked through Brooks' book and he does not mention it in chapter 3. It's only referred to once in the chapter 2 References on page 179 "Ogdin, J. L., 'The Mongolian hordes versus superprogrammer," Infosystems (December, 1972), pp. 20-23.". This citation seems to be used all over the place, but I can't find the publication anywhere. Has anyone found the actual source of this phrase?