Slashdot Mirror
When Smart Developers Generate Crappy Code
itwbennett writes "If you've ever worked on a team you can probably recall a time when, as a group, you produced work that was not as good as any one of you could have done on your own. Sarah Mei had this sort of sub-par teamwork experience, which she shared in her session at the O'Reilly Fluent Conference this week. Mei 'spoke about a time she worked on a team with really expert developers. Every one of them was someone whom you'd admire, who had previous written code that you and I would boast to have created. Yet, these smart people created modules that didn't talk to each other. And its quality was, to be kind, on the rotten side.' It's not an uncommon story, but why and how does it happen? The answer, says Mei, is that code quality 'is defined by its patterns of dependencies,' not all of which have equal weight. And, as it turns out, team communication is the heaviest dependency of all."
No, you are totally wrong, usually people don't bother communicating, so you don't lose a lot of time on communication.
It takes longer because of Ringelmann's effect, and this had been measured in 1914, by measuring efforts.
Here is the original article in french: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54409695.image.f14
When you have 1 guy, he works at 100%, but when you add 1 guy, you get 93% of their combined force.
Here is the table from 1 to 8:
1 => 100%
2 => 93%
3 => 85%
4 => 77%
5 => 70%
6 => 63%
7 => 56%
8 => 49%
With 8 people, you get the results of 4 people !
In fact, when you add people in a team, everybody reduces his level to the supposed level of the group.
If I'm alone, I think I'm the best, so I'll work at my best level.
If there is another guy, I'll work according to our common level, so I'll reduce my effort.
When you have a team, the team works at the lowest common level.
You can also see that when people walk in groups, they walk together at the slowest speed.