[TOMT] [VIDEO/POST] An anecdote/account of a company accidentally developing the same software at two different branch locations.

Many people are familiar with the idea in software development that adding more people to a project makes it go slower, not faster, with multiple books upon the the matter and extensive debates about whether large projects are more like a vast bazaar or like building a cathedral one brick at a time.

Somewhere in my endless hunt for the dopamine (I likely came across the story in a youtube video but it might have been an article or blog post) I heard the following story, which I'll try to retell.

A company had two locations in different cities; one was large and the other much smaller. Through some miscommunication, both branches began developing a certain software project independently, each not realising that the other was replicating their work. Given their relative differences in available staff, one of these projects had far more people working on it than the other. (maybe 3x larger?)

The larger team delivered equivalent software multiple months after the smaller team.

So ideally; I'd either like to have the anecdote substantiated, proven to be made-up, or at the very least find some source that refers to it.

(The Mythical Man Month is definitely the right subject but I have no idea whether it contains this actual story in it)