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9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

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Re: 9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

#13

Post by iwwr »

jamaicahest wrote: post #5
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #4

True if you need just one baby. If you need one baby per month on the other hand... Not quite sure how that translates to software development though...

Even then you would not get the first baby for at least 9 months. After that you would get one baby every month circa, but just as with most software development situations you can't speed up the first baby growth by throwing more people at it.

you can't speed up the first baby growth by throwing more people at it

No, but you can make the process more interesting. You could... monetize the situation.

Re: 9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

#14

Post by maxharris »

joeguilmette wrote: post #11

the analogy doesn't really work... because 9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months.

This is not the same thing. What if you have a pressing need for the result in one month, and you don't care about getting more later?

Edit: for example, if you're trying to make a phone call, what good is having a high transmission rate if it means that you also have high latency?

Re: 9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

#17

Post by m0nastic »

I've actually always disliked this analogy as it relates to project delivery (whether it be software development or a consulting project).

It suggests that there is nothing anyone can do to decrease the amount of time that a baby gestates; but that's quite different from project delivery.

While adding bodies does not necessarily divide the length of time required, there are absolutely concrete things which can be done to reduce the timeframe.

You can reduce scope (or features) for starters. A woman doesn't have the option of delivering a "minimum viable product" of a baby (with only core features) in less than 9 months, but a consulting engagement could certainly cut out features to be completed sooner.

Childbirth is a subset of project delivery whose completion dates are not particularly fungible. There are numerous other types that are.

Re: 9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

#18

Post by michaelpinto »

As a non-programmer The Mythical Man Month was perhaps one of the best books I've ever read to understand how to manage programmers, and how to explain to non-programmers how things work.

If your goal is feature poor and bug filled software then you can ignore this advice — but if you want to manage a large scale project with multiple programmers this advice still works today.

Re: 9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month

#19

Post by michaelpinto »

m0nastic wrote: post #17

I've actually always disliked this analogy as it relates to project delivery (whether it be software development or a consulting project). It suggests that there is nothing anyone can do to decrease the amount of time that a baby gestates; but that's quite different from project delivery. While adding bodies does not necessarily divide the length of time required, there are absolutely concrete things which can be don…

Part of my career has been doing software project management, and it's been very rare that an end client that I was working for was willing to extend a deadline or limit the functionality of a project. If a company is run and backed by software professionals this may happen, but for most other projects you just aren't allowed to change the rules — which is why the baby analogy holds so true.
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