The idea behind that "law" is that adding new developers to a project will both: 1) require time to get them up-to-speed on the project and the codebase, and 2) require time from existing members to help them get up-to-speed. It basically says that adding new developers near (or after) a deadline will not help reach that deadline any faster.
That being said, adding new resources to a project will absolutely improve velocity...in the long term. It is an investment, in more than just money. They need time to get up-to-speed, familiar with the terminology, the technology stack, the specific ways you've got everything set up. If your company is able to afford that much time right now (which could very easily be many weeks or months), then adding a resource is a good investment.
But you might start to receive some pushback from the business if, after a while, they aren't getting the new features they want. That's where you, having "boots on the ground" so-to-speak, need to be able to track the progress of the new developer and show the business that they are getting increasingly more productive, how much longer until they can expect to see significant improvements to overall developer velocity, and ultimately that they are getting their moneys-worth. It just takes time, sometimes a lot of it.
Business-people just want to see new features, and there's always a constant struggle between making "invisible improvements" that pay off in the long-term, and shipping new stuff that makes the higher-ups happy in the short-term.
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The idea behind that "law" is that adding new developers to a project will both: 1) require time to get them up-to-speed on the project and the codebase, and 2) require time from existing members to help them get up-to-speed. It basically says that adding new developers near (or after) a deadline will not help reach that deadline any faster.
That being said, adding new resources to a project will absolutely improve velocity...in the long term. It is an investment, in more than just money. They need time to get up-to-speed, familiar with the terminology, the technology stack, the specific ways you've got everything set up. If your company is able to afford that much time right now (which could very easily be many weeks or months), then adding a resource is a good investment.
But you might start to receive some pushback from the business if, after a while, they aren't getting the new features they want. That's where you, having "boots on the ground" so-to-speak, need to be able to track the progress of the new developer and show the business that they are getting increasingly more productive, how much longer until they can expect to see significant improvements to overall developer velocity, and ultimately that they are getting their moneys-worth. It just takes time, sometimes a lot of it.
Business-people just want to see new features, and there's always a constant struggle between making "invisible improvements" that pay off in the long-term, and shipping new stuff that makes the higher-ups happy in the short-term.