[Mailman-Developers] [GSoC 2012] Metrics

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Wackerbarth writes:

 > I will take the blame for any misunderstanding in this area.

There's no blame to be assigned, really, unless to me for being a
busybody. :-)  If George is making these plans while consulting his
mentor, that's what this is all about (but he didn't say that, so I
stuck my nose in!)  And maybe I misinterpreted the word "coding"
which, as I continue to explore the GSoC documentation, seems to be a
catchall for "GSoC work".

It's just been my experience in supervising economics and business
students' research (confirmed by a lot of the academic and practical
literature on managing software development) that people facing a
scheduling issue tend to skimp on planning, hoping to get lucky with a
first draft and as a backup, planning to revise during implementation.
This doesn't usually save time in the end, and often ends with a lower
quality product.

How George chooses to accomplish the planning, design, and coding, I'm
happy to leave up to him (and you).  I just wanted to warn against
hoping that producing a plan and design more quickly than he otherwise
would will save time.  Time taken liberally in the early stages will
conversely probably save time later.