Re:An epic treatise on scheduling, bug tracking, and triage
by apenwarr on Thursday December 14, 2017 @01:14PM
(#15924808)
Yeah, this is why I don't prefer the common "effort vs time" distinction. Instead I like to think of "relative size of task," which is a very easy concept for most people to intuitively understand. It's fairly easy to guess that a task that is twice as "big" will take twice the "effort" and thus also twice the "time," all else being equal. And it turns out that's all we need in order to estimate the schedule. See the detailed commentary here: http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#slide19
I can't understand this. You can measure time, but you can't measure effort directly, unless you're maybe doing some physical work like pulling weights. Also, you can't usually increase a mental effort, except by spending more time (e.g. by working overtime).
I can only see points or other non-time measures as proxies to time intervals (with uncertainty), but we can't know the function points -> time beforehand, we can only measure and map it from experience.
If you could explain "effort" from some other angle, I'd be grateful.