[kplato] Summary of Data Discussion

[Jim Sabatke]

One of my pet peeves about M$ Project is that a LOT of values get 
changed when you enter data.  It is maddening.

bilbo wrote:

><snip>
>
>I was talking to a friend about this last night and one of his pet 
>hates with MS Project is that if he changes the duration of a task it 
>changes the effort as well, he'd like to be able to hold one of these 
>invariant whilst changing the other on a task by task basis.
>Presumably a report to highlight the under-allocation of resource 
>where the duration is reduced but the effort remains the same 
>would be standard? (I don't see over-allocation being as big a 
>problem but ....)
>

Man days is another kind of risk.  There is inefficiency built in when 
splitting a job into parts for different resources.  My favorite 
expression is (From "The Mythical Man Month") "You can't get 9 women to 
deliver a baby on 1 month."

>
>In sw projects I'm used to quoting estimates for tasks as, for 
>example, 30 mandays +/- 5days. Does this translate easily into 
>risk or is risk to be handled separately, and if so should we be 
>including uncertainty? It could be required to enter the base 
>estimate plus the positive uncertainty (35 days from above) but this 
>smacks of imposing an approach and reducing flexibility.
>Is it only (some) software projects that work this way - surely other 
>disciplines have similar problems with estimation?
>
>regards,
>        Bill
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-- 
Jim Sabatke
SuSE 7.1 Linux
Kernel - 2.4.0
http://www.execpc.com/~jsabatke

"People tell me that I'm fading fast, that I can't last the whole night through" Janis Ian