PPT Slide
Chpt 3: The Surgical Team
A lot of the program managers believe that they are better off having a very small number of sharp Programmers on their team than having a large number of mediocre programmers.
However, the problem with an organization like this is that with such a small number of people in a group you cannot do large system applications and system programs.
For example, the OS360 took about 5,000 MAN-YEARS to complete so if we have a small team of 200 programmers it would have taken them 25 years to complete the project!
However, it took about 3 years to complete the project and, at times, there were more than 1,000 men working on the project.
Now assume that instead of hiring the 200 programmers we hire 10 very smart and productive programmers, therefore, let's say they can achieve an improvement factor of 7 in terms of productivity for programming and documentation, and we can also achieve an improvement factor of 7 in terms of reduced communication among the programmers.
In that case, for our 5,000 MAN-YEARS job, we need 10 years to complete the project. (5,000/(10X7X7)).