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7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

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11–20 of 44 posts

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#11

I thought for sure this would mention another "innovation" that came out of Chrysler, "Extreme Programming": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WasChryslerComprehensiveCompensationS... Short story: Chrylser had been trying to unify its various systems and subsystems for payroll and had failed and failed. Eventually, a group of consultants were brought in who had invented a particular agile technique, extreme-programming. Of cour…

Two of my developers were on the original XP team at Chrysler. They don't to XP at Chrysler anymore either.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#12

Anyone have any idea what this consultant might have been doing to get this kind of productivity?

As far as I can tell from the article: Magic.

Or, maybe he called it "agile", but I'm not really thinking gymnasts and ballerinas are magically great developers, though they are strikingly agile. This article needs some kind of detail--it doesn't answer most of the W's of good journalism: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. We've only got a really vague what ("a good developer built something that I liked a lot") and a vague where (Chrysler). Somehow all of the good bits are completely left out.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#14

Anyone have any idea what this consultant might have been doing to get this kind of productivity?

As far as I can tell from the article: Magic. Or, maybe he called it "agile", but I'm not really thinking gymnasts and ballerinas are magically great developers, though they are strikingly agile. This article needs some kind of detail--it doesn't answer most of the W's of good journalism: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. We've only got a really vague what ("a good developer built something that I liked a lot") a…

Yes. You have run into the nature of a non-disclosure agreement the big three have everyone sign. You cannot tell the good parts.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#15
post #10

Uhh...where does the $50 billion come from again?

Tracking down-time means knowing where your bottlenecks are. If you know your bottlenecks are you can improve cycle time. Improving cycle time by just a few seconds mean massive increases in output.

$50 billion might be a stretch, but it's not far off.

Note: Cycle time is the amount of time it takes to produce a part. It's sort of like the MHz of the manufacturing world. Usually car plants are setup such that there are n manufacturing lines in operation at any given time producing/assembling parts. So you're always at the mercy of the slowest line. It takes months to comission a new line so it's not just a matter of "adding servers" to improve production.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#16
post #8

Actually, this writer's conclusion, open source, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I believe, and what I think is the premise of this forum. Mega-institution isn't aware of its own golden needle in its haystack? Good! Another opportunity for a couple of hackers in a spare bedroom.

"Good! Another opportunity for a couple of hackers in a spare bedroom."

Right-O.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell from the article: Magic. Or, maybe he called it "agile", but I'm not really thinking gymnasts and ballerinas are magically great developers, though they are strikingly agile. This article needs some kind of detail--it doesn't answer most of the W's of good journalism: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. We've only got a really vague what ("a good developer built something that I liked a lot") a…

Yes. You have run into the nature of a non-disclosure agreement the big three have everyone sign. You cannot tell the good parts.

But, that means you don't have a story. You strung me along expecting a payoff, and there was none. It's more than a bit rude. ;-)

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#18
post #15
post #10

Uhh...where does the $50 billion come from again?

Tracking down-time means knowing where your bottlenecks are. If you know your bottlenecks are you can improve cycle time. Improving cycle time by just a few seconds mean massive increases in output. $50 billion might be a stretch, but it's not far off. Note: Cycle time is the amount of time it takes to produce a part. It's sort of like the MHz of the manufacturing world. Usually car plants are setup such that there a…

Thanks. I've read The Goal.

My point is that Chrysler itself was recently sold for less than $10 billion. Maybe Cerberus bought because they knew about this code that was written in a day and now they are going to turn them into a $50 billion dollar software company?

Look out SAP & Oracle...

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#19
post #8

Actually, this writer's conclusion, open source, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I believe, and what I think is the premise of this forum. Mega-institution isn't aware of its own golden needle in its haystack? Good! Another opportunity for a couple of hackers in a spare bedroom.

"Good! Another opportunity for a couple of hackers in a spare bedroom." Right-O.

Agreed. The problem is, hackers don't tend to even have access to this type of problem because you need access to the very real environment of a large factory floor. And, even if you did build a better solution, there are relatively few customers, so selling is really about selling into large corporate bureaucracies, not getting someone to download a cool new plug-in. This type of selling is very expensive, and they will not buy from a couple of hackers in a spare beadroom

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You have run into the nature of a non-disclosure agreement the big three have everyone sign. You cannot tell the good parts.

But, that means you don't have a story. You strung me along expecting a payoff, and there was none. It's more than a bit rude. ;-)

I told you too much already. :-) Several clever grammars were written. If you want any more, you have to buy Chrysler.
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