dear russel, > What the whole activity does do is give people the confidence > to "guess" with confidence ... and recognize their peers as helpful, creative individuals worth to communicate and exchange with - in an endeavor to uncover one of the most universal human desires so much suppressed by schools and universities: learning.
> Clearly estimation of phenomena in the world is more deterministic > that estimation of the cognitive and inspirational activity that > is software development but I wonder if courses on estimation would > help software budgeting and planning. i am convinced that courses on estimation do a great job in this respect and that's why i start project management trainings with the actual estimation and execution of tasks as trivial like peeling eggs. a lot can be learnt from those exercises, maybe most importantly, that reality is more complex than it appears filtered by our personal, collective and technical models. simple conclusions that are frequently overlooked can be drawn from such experiences, for example that a range for an estimate has a much higher probability of being "right" than a single number: trivial, but overlooked by the pressure for simplified solutions and consequently not practiced. how many managers ask for a best case estimate and a worst case estimate as opposed to the question "when is it finished?". project management is at least as much a social activity as it is a technical activity. a fact that explains why so many textbook project management approaches fail. best regards, gerold -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Auftrag von Russel Winder Gesendet: Montag, 22. Januar 2007 18:26 An: Ruven E Brooks Cc: discuss@ppig.org Betreff: Re: PPIG discuss: software estimating and partitioning On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 08:00 -0600, Ruven E Brooks wrote: [ . . . ] > If you've got no historical data, a much better bet is to get a group > of people to give estimates. As well as code writers, [ . . . ] It is very noticeable that Physicists (possibly also Chemists, Biologists and Mathematicians but I have no data :-) generally have formal courses on estimation -- I know I did as a student, and I tutored on such courses at a number of other universities. It never ceases to amaze me that groups of 4 or 5 people can, based on knowledge of the world and various formulae from physics generally come up with very good estimates for quite bizarre numbers -- for example the rate of growth of a blade of grass in molecules per mega-fortnight. Part of the accuracy is clearly attributable to it being a group activity, though it does rely on good knowlege. What the whole activity does do is give people the confidence to "guess" with confidence -- as opposed to putting random numbers into a project management tool and expecting it to give the right answer. Clearly estimation of phenomena in the world is more deterministic that estimation of the cognitive and inspirational activity that is software development but I wonder if courses on estimation would help software budgeting and planning. -- Russel. ==================================================== Dr Russel Winder +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Road +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
