"Ronn!Blankenship" wrote:
>
> At 09:45 AM 1/11/04, Steve Sloan II wrote:
> >Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
> >
> > > I don't know about financial models, but I do know that
> > > judgement, especially when immediate judgement on critical
> > > issues is necessary, is affected by fatigue. For one thing,
> > > tired people tend to be grumpy people, and may do things
> > > they later regret.
> >
> >I think both of us are looking at this issue from a programmer's
> >viewpoint, where long hours usually *are* a sign of poor planning,
> >either by the managers who didn't hire enough people, or on the
> >software engineering side, where time for completing tasks was
> >severely underestimated.
>
> That's true. (I'm sure all here have heard the rule for turning project
> time estimates into more realistic predictions: multiply the estimate by 2
> and change to the next larger time unit, so an estimate of "1 day" is in
> reality likely to take 2 weeks to complete, and an estimate of "two months"
> means it is likely to really take four years . . . and I won't even make
> another reference to "The Mythical Man-Month" . . . )
Ah, but it's an excellent book. Anyone trying to manage a programming
project ought to read it, IMO, and it's worth reading even if you're
*not* trying to manage programming projects.
(Did I ever mention having been on a bus briefly with Brooks?)
> Actually, though, I wasn't thinking of programming examples when I wrote
> the earlier message. One profession where many people think fatigue is
> frequently the cause of serious (too often, fatal) errors is the medical
> profession. And as far as tired people being grumpy even if they don't
> want to be, and yelling at the people they really don't want to yell at,
> just ask any new parent, particularly a first-time parent . . .
Yep. What he said....
Julia
There and Doing That (and contemplating the t-shirt) Maru
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