I'm currently watching someone use story points as time estimates (1 point = 1 day), but ALSO using the heuristic that 5 points is too much (which is for when story points represent complexity), so now no one is ever allowed to work on one thing for five days.
💀
I move ever closer to my villain arc.
@ludicity Anyone who ever really cared about valid software metrics wouhld be conversant with Capers Jones and would never, ever use something as unscientific as story points to try to measure software effort.
#DumbAllOver
@ludicity Oh. You're one of those.
Anyone who ever really cared about valid software metrics wouhld be conversant with Capers Jones and would never, ever use something as unscientific as story points to try to measure software effort.
That's a ridiculously absolute statement and obviously wrong.
And the whole reason story points are so explicitly vague is that there is no reliable scientific method to measure "software effort".
@mcv Capers Jones, IFPUG, etc., have a lot of data that shows how software effort is measurable and predictable. It's not perfect and there are gaps, but that's mostly due to a lack of acceptance. FUD abounds.
In the software world, it's easy to shout, "Perfect is the enemy of the good!", and invent a new 3GL rather than evaluate if it'll be a waste of time.
I have no doubt that Capers Jones has valuable insights, but this is honestly the first time I've heard of him, so I'm pretty sure a lot of people out there haven't. Thanks for mentioning him, though; I'll definitely look him up.
But I remain sceptical about the ability to accurately and scientifically measure and estimate programming effort. It's a problem that has stumped people for decades, and I'd expect a lot more noise if someone had definitively cracked it.
@mcv @lwriemen I haven't heard of Jones, though @anEXPer sent me this a while ago: https://daverooneyca.substack.com/p/ultimately-theres-no-point
At this point in my life, I don't think about this very much. Teams of cosplaying engineers have bigger problems, and teams of serious people that have gelled socially will find something that works for them. The latter group can optimize a lot, but I've only gotten that far very recently and we have other issues as a new business.
@ludicity @mcv @anEXPer
I have a very short list of people to listen to regarding software development:
1. Sally Shlaer and Steve Mellor for system structure and software modeling.
2. Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister for software management.
3. Capers Jones for software effort measurement.
4. C. J. Date for database.
Hopefully there are younger people continuing their work.
@lwriemen Is Capers Jones on LinkedIn though? Because if they aren't then I ain't interested.
Speaking of which, when did LinkedIn rebrand to Mastodon, and how do I get the old UI back?