I'll back this up from a project manager's perspective...
10 people @ 1 hour each IS NOT EQUAL to 1 person @ 10 hours.
It's somewhat the opposite of manufacturing-line specialization.

Have any of you used XP (Xtreme Programming)?  I've implemented
it on a large project and got to try/evaluate the sub-concepts
within the methodology.  The biggest and probably only failure
was pair programming -- with any combination of strong/strong,
strong/weak, or weak/weak programmers, productivity was no
where near that of individual programmers (though there were
some other benefits such as the weak members learning techniques
from the experts -- still some training would've done that as
well).

I'm sure that communication and the processes to support
communication and documentation are a major factor for this,
but I feel sure there are other reasons.

Cheers,
-Neil.


Wouter van Ooijen scribbled:

> > Sure some tasks like simulators etc are big and
> > need 1000's of
> > person hours, but if 1000 people each wrote a small module,
> > it would take no
> > more than 5 hours per person (assuming it would take one
> > person 2000 hours).
>
> No way, unless it is trivial software. In my experience productivity is
> more like the logarithmical than linear in the number of persons
> involved.

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