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The importance of the individual

The importance of the individual ACMSIGSOFT, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING NOTES Vol5No3 July 1980 Page 48 THE IMPORTANCEOF THE INDIVIDUAL Robert L. Glass Boeing Aerospace Co. Scattered through the computing l i t e r a t u r e for over lO years now have been l i t t l e clues about a matter which may be v i t a l to the issue of programmer productivity. These clues point to one factor which controls a probable order of magnitude difference. I t is not an easy factor to convert into meaningful results. And yet with that kind of promise, i t deserves more than the cursory attention i t has gotten over the years. The factor is simple: Individual differences between programmers are immense. For instance, way back in 1968 three SDC researchers (Sackman, Erikson and Grant) stumbled across individual differences of up to 28-I while doing a study comparing batch and timesharing methodologies. "The most important practical finding involves the s t r i k i n g individual differences in programmer performance," they said (SACK68). For instance, also in 1968 Jules Schwartz, a computing pioneer, said "Within a group of programmers, there may be an order of magnitude http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Association for Computing Machinery

The importance of the individual

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References (4)

Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
0163-5948
DOI
10.1145/1005913.1005915
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ACMSIGSOFT, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING NOTES Vol5No3 July 1980 Page 48 THE IMPORTANCEOF THE INDIVIDUAL Robert L. Glass Boeing Aerospace Co. Scattered through the computing l i t e r a t u r e for over lO years now have been l i t t l e clues about a matter which may be v i t a l to the issue of programmer productivity. These clues point to one factor which controls a probable order of magnitude difference. I t is not an easy factor to convert into meaningful results. And yet with that kind of promise, i t deserves more than the cursory attention i t has gotten over the years. The factor is simple: Individual differences between programmers are immense. For instance, way back in 1968 three SDC researchers (Sackman, Erikson and Grant) stumbled across individual differences of up to 28-I while doing a study comparing batch and timesharing methodologies. "The most important practical finding involves the s t r i k i n g individual differences in programmer performance," they said (SACK68). For instance, also in 1968 Jules Schwartz, a computing pioneer, said "Within a group of programmers, there may be an order of magnitude

Journal

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Jul 1, 1980

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