A project is six weeks late. The deadline has not moved. Leadership asks:
“How many developers do we need to add to get back on schedule?”
That question assumes the delay is caused by insufficient coding capacity.
Sometimes it is. Often it is not.
A late project may already be constrained by architecture decisions, unresolved requirements, code review, testing, integration, or a small number of engineers who hold critical knowledge. Adding developers increases theoretical capacity, but it also creates more demand on those constraints.
