Quantification enhances clarity of communication. Increased clarity of communication enhances interpersonal relationships. Are enhanced interpersonal relationships something you need?
Let’s do a little back-of-a-fag-packet math re: Quintessence.
There’s somewhere around 26 million software developers worldwide.
A typical software developer, including on-costs, runs out at about £30,000 per annum (UK more like £90K, BRIC countries maybe £10k).
So that’s a world-wide spend of some (26m * 30k) = £780 billion (thousand million), per annum.
Given an uplift in productivity of 5-8 times for Quintessential development approaches, that’s an annual, recurring cost reduction (saving) of £624 billion to £682.5 billion.
You may find claimed productivity increases of this magnitude (5-8 times) somewhat unbelievable (despite the evidence). So let’s be conservative and propose a modest doubling of productivity. That would mean an annual, recurring cost reduction (saving) of £390 billion. Still not to be sniffed at.
Let’s consider a single UK-based organisation with 100 developers. Present costs (for the developers alone) will be around £90k * 100 = £9 million annually (more or less, depending on a number of factors). Again, assuming a modest doubling of productivity*, a quintessential approach would garner an annual, recurring cost reduction (saving) of £4.5 million for this example organisation.
What do these figures tell us? That the world and individual organisations both are not at all interested in reducing software development costs (or increasing software development productivity). Or maybe they just don’t believe it’s possible to be any more productive than they are already (it is possible to be much more productive, see e.g. RIghtshifting).
*Or getting twice as much done in a given time, for the same spend. Or halving the time it takes to get something done, for the same spend.
– Bob
Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub).
Number 4 in Phil Crosby’s Four Absolutes of Quality is “The measurement of quality is the price of nonconformance (PONC), NOT indices.”
By which he meant, that the price of non-conformance to requirements tells us how often and the degree to which our organisation achieves quality.
Le’s unwrap that a bit further.
In Absolute number 1, he says “The definition of quality is conformance to requirements, NOT ‘goodness’”.
So when we’re delivering stuff to our immediate customers that fails to conform to their requirements, that is not contributing to their success, we are failing to provide quality goods or services.
We can measure this failure in terms of the price of non-conformance. That is, the costs involved in reworking, retesting, correcting, substituting, fixing-up or otherwise remediating the things we deliver so they do conform to our customers requirements.
In short, any cost that would not have been expended if quality had been perfect contributes to the price of non-conformance.
If we look at the typical work of managers, almost all of what they do on a daily basis is all those fire-fighting remediations mentioned above. Indeed, in most organisations, this is the raison d’être of the manager’s role (minuscule other reasons include prevention of problems, and growth of the organisation and its revenues, profits).
Therefore it’s but a small jump to see that managers are one of the major contributors to their organisation’s price of non-conformance. In other words their costs (salaries, etc). are almost entirely consequent on their fire-fighting role.If fire-fighting was unnecessary, so would be the managers, and their costs.
– Bob
Unknown (2013). Manager Thought: Price of Non Conformance (PONC). [online] Manager Thought. Available at: https://rkc-mgr.blogspot.com/2013/07/price-of-non-conformance-ponc.html [Accessed 4 Mar. 2022].
Merbler, K. (2021) The Entrepreneur Who Created A Business Camelot: Philip B. Crosby. Dominionhouse Publishing & Design, LLC. Kindle Edition.
The idea of quantifying things (e.g. topics of disagreement) for clarity can seem like a major waste of time until we realise the amount of time we’re wasting through lack of clarity.
It’s amazing how a few hours of discussion can save a few minutes of quantification.
Think Different