Software Staff Size Still Impacts Productivity: Brooks Law Lives!
When drawing conclusions from data it is important to analyse all the relevant considerations and not just one variable. For example, the first chart “effective productivity versus effective functions” shows a slight increase in productivity as the project gets bigger. Some people have jumped to conclusions stating that bigger projects are more productive. However, when looking at staff levels the fallacy becomes apparent.
Of course it is important to define what productivity is. If someone changes a 10,000 function point system and adds 5, the productivity is not 10,005. The effective productivity id based on the new functionality and the work involved in redesign, reimplementation, and retest, forming an effective productivity. Some studies leave out such detail.
The second chart, from the same data-set, shows that as the staff gets bigger the productivity gets lower, exactly what Brooks Law stated.
Note this analysis was performed using a portion of our database that includes function points, and effective function points as well a effort and staff.
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Project Prediction Infographic
I found that as my organizations got bigger, the trend was for us to pick up extra tasks often unrelated to the project or primary service. This of course reduce the overall productivity of the group relative to our primary function.
I’ve demonstrated numerous times what I called the 25% rule. Given any organization, there is a subset of that organization which can do the job the organization is chartered to do, but do it with only 25% of the existing people – and do it as well, if not better than the existing organization.
This is not about laying people off, it is about how large organizations become inefficient for various reasons. I use to think reorganizations just generated noise, but when done correctly they can free “pockets of excellence” to do some incredibly productive work.
Bruce Benson
http://PMToolsThatWork.com
P.S. I use to, somewhat jokingly, describe software maintenance as nothing more than 99% reuse. We didn’t need to focus on reuse, we already had it. It was called “maintenance.”