Comments on: Looking for a Reference

By: James A. Ward

James A. Ward — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 06:03:33 +0000

In “Productivity Management In The Development Of Computer Applications” by John E. Keane, Marilyn Keane and Mark Teagan the following appears: “Actual Productive Time: Expecting a full eight hours of productivity per day is unreasonable because of interruptions, time devoted to nonproject communication, personal business, and other unscheduled activities. A Bell Labs study indicated that approximately 30 % of a programmer’s day is spent in such nonproject activities. In addition, training, holidays, vacations, illness, and other absences have a direct effect on elapsed time and should be provided for in estimates. Keane uses a figure of 80%; IBM 75%.”
As this was written in 1984, we did not have e-mail and surfing the net to deal with. I have been teaching the concept of “productive time” for years. I hope the above helps.

By: keith ray

keith ray — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:31:54 +0000

It’s probably not in any books that I’ve read, but on mailing lists and maybe other web-resources, XP gurus have said that pair programming is tiring enough that most XP teams only do pair-programming 6 hours a day.

By: Wayne Allen

Wayne Allen — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:14:45 +0000

This may not be exactly what you were looking for, but is in the same spirit with some numbers behind it.
http://www.caseplace.org/cases3117/cases_show.htm?doc_id=96442

By: Jared

Jared — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 07:10:18 +0000

I’m sure I’ve read it too, but can’t remember where. Any references in Peopleware?
Here’s a non-technical reference:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC37/Hunnicut.htm
“Through the depression years, the six-hour day functioned as W.K. Kellogg and Lewis J. Brown, the company president, hoped. Jobs were created as the company payroll grew. Plant employees seemed delighted to have more time of their own, especially so since their weekly paychecks were only a little smaller. Workers were paid for seven hours during the first year of the six-hour day, but beginning in the second year, total wages were raised back to the nominal level of the eight-hour day.
Productivity was up, both because of the introduction of new technology and because of Kellogg’s innovative approach to hours and work incentives. In essence, the management of Kellogg’s was sharing the benefits of that increased productivity with the workers in the form of free time.”

By: Jason Yip

Jason Yip — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 02:07:00 +0000

This sounds like something Watts Humphries would have written or if not, something he would have measured.

By: Erick Herring

Erick Herring — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:19:06 +0000

Okay, I spent about twenty minutes longer on this than I intended, and I still didn’t find even a close reference to what you seem to want. I started out thinking that you were paraphrasing, anyway, so I was hoping to find the “real” quote for you.
Having said that, I think you are looking for something by DeMarco and/or Lister (Peopleware 2/e or Slack), Constantine (Constantine on Peoplware, The Peoplware Papers), or Csikszentmahalyi (Flow). Maybe McConnell, but I doubt it.
I hope this helps jog someone’s memory for you.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:28:23 +0000

I was speaking to a co-worker about this several months ago, He was reading:
“Agile software development with scrum” and “Agile project management with scrum” both by Ken Schwaber
Hope this helps you find what you’re looking for.

By: Eric Willeke

Eric Willeke — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:26:22 +0000

I think I may have seen this in Robert Glass’ 55 Facts & Fallicies book. Unfortunately, my company is moving this week, so it’s buried at the bottom of a box and I can’t check.