Category: scientific management
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Why is actual implementation time often reported in whole hours?
Estimates of the time needed to implement a software task are often given in whole hours (i.e., no minutes), with round numbers being preferred. Surprisingly, reported actual implementation times also share this ‘preference’ for whole hours and round numbers (around a third of short task estimates are accurate, so it is to be expected that […]
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Employment in the software business: we know nothing
Tens of millions of people get paid to work on the creation and maintenance of software systems, by companies employing thousands of developers to those employing a single developer (in the UK there are almost 300K registered software companies; 5% of registered companies). This huge ecosystem is almost completely ignored by the software engineering research […]