3 ms·
5000 / 17 ≈ 295. Is it a fair assumption to make that a commercial program of equivalent complexity would take 295x fewer man-hours?
by emerongi 2y ago
5000 / 17 ≈ 295. Is it a fair assumption to make that a commercial program of equivalent complexity would take 295x fewer man-hours?
- fleischhauf 2y agowithout any knowledge of the other processes involved in space shuttle software development, I highly doubt that the correlation is that easy
- burkaman 2y agoNo, I don't think so, 295x is a crazy high factor. The article says 260 people are involved, and let's generously say it took 20 years to write the software (the first mission was 10 years after the program started and it was around for a total of 40 years). Dividing by 295 means a commercial team of the same size could have done it in less than a month. Or with a 10x smaller team, about 8 months. I don't think either of those are plausible.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- swiftcoder 2y agoWe're well in mythical-man-month territory as you try and accelerate the timeline, though. Typical software companies can't coordinate a 260 person team quickly enough to even start a project of that size in a month.
- bigiain 2y agoAs I skimmed that, the text wrapped at the hyphen in man-hours, and my brain autocompleted it to "295x fewer managers" - and it pretty much rings true...