James,
Thanks, that's an interesting answer.
Lots of fields other than software struggle with similar issues. For
example, I can't remember the last time a major aerospace manufacturer
managed to design and build one of their flagship products on schedule, and
major public transportation projects in the U.S. seem to fall behind
schedule and over budget on a regular basis
If it wouldn't be a distraction from other priorities, I'm wondering if
project management could be the subject of a Tech Talk sometime. (Cc'ing
Rachel who I believe coordinates Tech Talks.)
Thanks,
Pine
On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 3:16 PM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On 27 July 2015 at 14:44, Pine W
<wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
James,
Thanks.
I have a follow up question regarding project management in
general. When the length of time for development and testing are unbounded
so that product quality is the principal goal,
how do you forecast needs
for human resources and financial resources?
The trite answer is "guesstimation based on professional experience", but
in general the honest answer is that no-one has solved this issue in
Computer Science (the snake oil salespeople who claim otherwise would
protest).
Instead, the industry focusses on a variety of techniques around concepts
like scoping the issue (iterations), treating the symptoms (Waterfall) or
recognising failure quickly (agile). It's a fascinating field, and there
are many people far more qualified to opine on it than me (I never even did
my PhD). My vague gut feeling is that in a century or two the world will
have settled down and we'll have solved this problem, but before then we'll
have outsourced such work to semi-strong AI and it'll be their issue. :-)
J.
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l