Corporate productivity and the π constant
by Volker Weber
Tried to send a voice recording to someone at IBM yesterday. The BlackBerry (and other mobile phones) use the AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech encoding format used in GSM telephony for that. Recipient could not read the file (hint: iTunes plays that through Quicktime). Recoded as MP3, which was then removed by the corporate babysitter.
Which leads me to my rule of thumb when estimating the effort to complete a task:
- Estimate how long it takes to complete the task and multiply by π.
- Multiply by π again if it involves a group of up to 10 people.
- Multiply by π again if it involves an organization with more than 100 employees.
- Multiply by π again for an "enterprise".
- Multiply by π again for an organization which collaborates through telephone conferences.
Comments
Care to tell us the value of n?
It is not an n, and the first one is linked.
<Homer>
Mmmmm... Pie
</Homer>
I blame it
a) on my colorblindness (can't distinguish red from black in thin fonts)
and
b) on IE7 and Windows that I have to use (π n - almost no difference)
But π sounds like a good factor :)
I'd put an additional π in Rule 1: "Estimate how long it takes to complete the task and multiply by π." :-)
Scott, I forgot to do that. Changed now. :-)
So true. Thanx.
Multiply by π again if the press or blogosphere knows about the task.
How is that?
Preparing for the questions about the task, answering the questions, correcting the errors in the answers, reviewing the reports based on the corrected answers to the questions, repeat at various phases of the task, and the big one: making reality agree with the answers that were given before you should have been answering questions, or controlling the damage ;-)
