Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!hwcs!styri
From: styri@cs.hw.ac.uk (Yu No Hoo)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: use of metrics
Message-ID: <3223@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Jun 91 14:03:04 GMT
References: <1991Jun7.201655.12088@netcom.COM> <1991Jun11.205939.9723@visix.com> <1991Jun12.003809.24084@netcom.COM>
Sender: news@cs.hw.ac.uk
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 36

In article <1991Jun12.003809.24084@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
>>|> >BUT you cannot automagically collect data which is invisible.  Kindly explain
>>|> >to me how a simple tool will determine the amount of unpaid (unrecorded) time
>>|> >spent?
>>|> 
>>|> Duration of login?
>>168 hrs/wk.
>

Gee, this reminds me of the pain I went through trying to create a progress
report sheet that would satisfy the accountant, the project manager, the
guys who did the job, and of course myself - the QA kid.  :-)

Guess there are some things that cannot be recorded automatically. You'll
always have people who work in the lunch room and read a newspaper in the
office. The keyboard is only used to 'record' the work (a tedious task).
(Guess we have too define 'work' here - before paying.)

Anyway, as long as a guy gets paid for recorded time I think unrecorded
time is likely to turn up as a health problem. However, a serious problem
for the project manager is the time recorded incorrectly. ("You see, there
was no more money allocated to this task, so we "used" that task instead."
or... "Well, I was called to this meeting, but there was no place to record
the time I used...")

Tradition says programmers always underestimate. Well, I've experienced the
same with managers - they just forget to multiply. ("Sorry I'm 5 min. late"
- "Well, we've been waiting for an hour", replied the 12 others.) Sometimes
meetings eat a lot of project time.

Sorry for sidetracking the thread from sw-eng theory, but i couldn't resist.
----------------------
Haakon Styri
Dept. of Comp. Sci.              ARPA: styri@cs.hw.ac.uk
Heriot-Watt University          X-400: C=gb;PRMD=uk.ac;O=hw;OU=cs;S=styri
Edinburgh, Scotland