It was 1999, and Brian's company's new online marketing venture was finally off the ground and making a profit using an off-the-shelf conglomeration of bits and pieces of various content management, affiliate program, and ad servers. Brian's team had hit all of the goals for the first funding tranche, and the next step was to use those millions of dollars to grow the staff from twelve to fifty, half of whom would be software developers working directly for Brian. The project was an $8 million, nine-month development effort to build, from the ground up, the best 21st-century marketing/e-commerce/community/ad network/reporting system mousetrap possible. Leading a team of twenty people was a big step up for Brian, so he buckled down, read management theory books, re-read The Mythical Man Month, learned the ins-and-outs of project management software, invested in UML and process training, and carefully pored over resumes to find the best candidates.