[ih] Secret precedence schemes back then

Spencer Dawkins spencer at mcsr-labs.org
Wed Jan 28 15:40:52 PST 2009


I'm thinking (without finding my copy) that "The Mythical Man-Month" was the 
last book I read before identifying a slight variation of Sheldon's law...

> Sheldon's Law speak to the general case:  Things take longer than they 
> take.
>
>    How long will it take to get that job done?  That will take two weeks.
>
> Better to add 10 per cent to the two weeks, then double it.

"... and then bump the units" - so when you double, you also slide "weeks" 
to "months".

This worked better than it should have when I was still estimating software 
completion.

Thanks for sharing,

Spencer 





More information about the Internet-history mailing list