Nine Women, Nine Months, Nine Babies
There is an old IT adage that you can't make a baby in one month by throwing nine women at the problem.
The point being, of course, that there is a diminishing return on investment to adding people to a project (reference Fred Brooks' point that adding people to a late project makes it later).
Usually overlooked is the fact that nine women can make nine babies in nine months.
The point being, of course, that there is a diminishing return on investment to adding people to a project (reference Fred Brooks' point that adding people to a late project makes it later).
Usually overlooked is the fact that nine women can make nine babies in nine months.
posted by michael at 1:30 PM
3 Comments:
A colleague of mine made two babies in six months. "I delivered twice the functionality in two-thirds the time," she said, "but I went a million dollars over budget."
Actually, there MAY be a POINT at which the return diminishes. That is a very different thing than what you said.
Some tasks have a point of diminishing returns and some do not. If one part of a project is to produce 700 art assets for a video game then that point is pretty high. If it is to produce a 'module' of code than it might be pretty low for that task.
Hi Brian. At the task level, you're right, of course, but I was thinking about it at the project level.
Most projects have more than one task, but we can often run multiple tasks simultaneously. Hence nine women, nine babies.
Thanks for reading and thanks for the comment!
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