Throwing In The Towel

I’ve said before that I enjoy thinking about organizations, continuously optimizing them to give the highest probability of the desired outcomes. Organizational ergonomics, if you will. I’m also a mathematician by training and a nerd, which is what made Applying the Universal Scalability Law to organizations such a fascinating read, because it puts statistical weight behind its arguments.

In the same vein, I thoroughly enjoyed the following two articles that take a mathematical approach to understanding variability in project estimation (a perniciously difficult problem in all technical work):

• Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model
• σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?

The latter’s provocative title hopefully piques your interest enough to read further. You won’t regret it!