Reading Notes: Professional Software Development (Part 4)

Personnel Factors

• One study found 20 to 1 difference in productivity between different developers to debug the same program.
• Other studies give similar conclusions, mostly at least a 10 to 1 difference.
• In the Cocomo II model, personnel factors have the following influence on project estimates:
  
  • Experience in the application area: 1.51
  • Communication factor: 1.53
  • Programming language and tools experience: 1.43
  • Personnel continuity: 1.51
  • Platform experience: 1.40
  • Programmer capability: 1.76
  • Analyst capability: 2.00
  • Total Cumulative: 24.60
• The above also implies that senior staff is a critical success factor.
• Motivation is one of the greatest influence on performance.