Re: chief programmer team organizations was (c++ vs ada results)

[sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)]

In article <1066@dumbcat.sf.ca.us> marc@dumbcat.sf.ca.us (Marco S Hyman) writes:
>If one can imagine the system then one can build the system, just a little
>slower than two, or three.  But in any case faster than 100.  Every new person
>adds to the communications burden and increases the chance of a
>mis-communication causing something to be misunderstood.  Misunderstandings
>lead to defects and system failures.  I'd guess seven would be the top end,
>providing you have the right seven.  Three seems to be a good number in
>practice.

This certainly fits with my experience.

A few years ago I was working on a 'large' project (for another company).
We had a team of about 10-12 programmers on the project for most of its
run.  When we finally quit, 2 years behaind schedule, we had a system
that didn't really work, was almost unmaintainable and had at least twice
the code necessary to do the job.

If the team had been reduced to the three (or four) best programmers the
project would have been done, nearly on time, and certainly in a usable
form.  The additional 7-8 people just slowed it down (and reduced quality).
[This was an extreme case, and there were other problems - like changing
specs, but the man-power bloat just amplified the problems]
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)