While the world argues about how to solve our common problems, I found this
interesting example on project management:

http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2005/0,4814,104846,00.html

...QSM recently repeated a study it did in 1996 to measure the effect of
adding resources to compress a delivery schedule. This is a common reaction
to being in a hurry or panicking over delays: Think fast and good but not
cheap.

It studied small teams (five or fewer resources) and large teams (20 or more
resources) developing between 10,000 and 200,000 lines of code and took a
number of measurements including lines of code developed, schedule progress
and defect creation. What it found wasn't a surprise, because the results
simply confirmed the 1996 findings, but they should surprise you.

The difference between a large team (29 resources) and a small one (2.5)
developing 40,000 lines of code was only about 12 calendar days earlier
delivery! It took 191 person-months of resources for the large team and only
40 person-months for the small team. The difference at $12,000 per person
month was $1.8 million. Now of course that results in a business decision:
If 12 days of product availability is worth more than $1.8 million, it may
be worth the investment. But it is worth doing the math.

One reason for the nonlinear productivity was explained by the fact that
large teams produced more than six times as many defects as small ones,
which took additional time to discover, fix and retest. So adding 11.6 times
as many resources produced an increase of six times as many defects ...
pretty close to a ratio of 2:1. In case this didn't sink in, let me repeat
it: There were six times as many defects in the same amount of code written
by almost 12 times as many programmers.
...

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If I am correct, when one looks at the real success stories in the MPE
marketplace, the staff size of these companies have been smaller. The
Image/MPE market is a testament to the stability of small and nimble groups.

Wish us all luck as we move on to "bigger and better" things...

Mark W.

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