"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.
I agree! I have praised it so many times on this list that I thought I'd give everyone a break from doing so again. (Someday maybe I should even buy a copy to call my own.)
(Did I ever mention having been on a bus briefly with Brooks?)
No. Anything interesting to report?
> 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
Probably contemplating *any* shirt without spit-up on it . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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