Few books on software applications or development last more than a few years.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is the exception that provdes the rule.

The premise of Frederick Brooks’ seminal text is nothing if not simple. In a nutshell, nine women can’t give birth to a baby in a month. The same maxim holds true for developing software. Bring a new coder up to speed by definition requires a step backward. Any efficience gains aren’t likely to happen immediately.

It turns out that writing books follows a similar law.

The single author faces multiple constraints: time, resources, funds, and knowledge most readily come to mind. Needing to reach agreement with a co-author, however, is decidely not one of them.

Keep this in mind if you’re thinking of bring along a co-pilot on your writing project, much less more tha one.

In the extreme, my second book The Next Wave of Technologies contains contributions from—wait for it—15 different individuals. If that seems like a Herculean project to manage, trust your instinces. In a way, though, it wasn’t that hard. Each contributor knew that s/he would be writing a single chapter—and not providing any input into the foundational aspects of the book.

Before embarking on a book with a co-author, ask yourself if the two of you are on the same page.

And then ask again.