--Originally published at TI2011 – Luis Wilson
I really liked this chapter. It has such a natural flow to it, and the philosophical end was just my taste. What I got most about this chapter is how DIFFICULT it is to quantify management. It may even be impossible to get such accurate measures, but maybe, just maybe, enough subjectiveness will get you closer to the truth than nothing at all.
Is it safe to assume that Lahksa wasn’t kidnapped by the bad guy from the last chapter? I mean, what she did for Webster Tompkins was in favor of everything our main characters have been trying to accomplish. She did leave misteriously, but I guess it’s not up to us to know for sure as of now.
So, Lahksa sends a postcard to Tompkins telling him that she sent a guy from the US to help them out quantify their project progress. This Mr. T. Johns Caporous has these function points that he uses to numerically measure project productivity. He quickly flies to Morovia and tells them the function points of the 6 projects. Unfortunately, this guy has to be somewhere else that very evening, and so leaves quite suddenly.
Due to having a very long day, Tompkins and the ex-General were scratching their heads trying to figure out just what the heck those points even meant. Belinda Binda shows up (she wasn’t there for whatever reason) and figures out that those function points are like remaining pieces of work units that a project needs to spend before it is finally done. Cool and all, but still, what is a function point? What is it equal to?
Apparently, that’s up to the actual people doing the project, how they work, manage, and all those things. For this, they promote Waldo and make him
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