avr@mtgzz.att.com (a.v.reed) (01/12/89)
In article <9325@smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes: > In article <5175@lynx.UUCP> m5@lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally) writes: > >Wyse 50's cost just a little over $300. I'd like to see you in a > >meeting with my manager trying to convince him that it's a good idea to > >spend six times more on your terminal than everyone else's. > > And there seems to lie the real problem: Harvard Business School- > trained managers with their typically short-term, "bottom line", > mentality. How, indeed, is one to reduce the advantages of > increased flexibility and convenience to a specific dollar value? With figures. A programmer costs her employer about 100,000 dollars a year in salary, benefits, plant, and cost of supervision. A Wyse 50 displays 24 lines; a blit (or 5620, 630 etc.) 62 or more. According to the measurements of Reisel and Shneiderman (Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, August 10-15, 1987, in press at North-Holland) the same programmer will get her work done 14% faster with a 60 line terminal than with a 22 line terminal. So getting a 630 instead of a traditional terminal will save $ 14,000 per year in programmer time. Payback time is less than 2 months. How's that for short-term bottom line? Adam Reed (avr@mtgzz.ATT.COM)
friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) (01/15/89)
In article <9325@smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes: > How, indeed, is one to reduce the advantages of > increased flexibility and convenience to a specific dollar value? In article <4876@mtgzz.att.com>, avr@mtgzz.att.com (a.v.reed) writes: > With figures. A programmer costs her employer about 100,000 dollars a > year in salary, benefits, plant, and cost of supervision. A Wyse 50 > displays 24 lines; a blit (or 5620, 630 etc.) 62 or more. According to > the measurements of Reisel and Shneiderman (Proceedings of the Second > International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, August 10-15, > 1987, in press at North-Holland) the same programmer will get her work > done 14% faster with a 60 line terminal than with a 22 line terminal. > So getting a 630 instead of a traditional terminal will save $ 14,000 > per year in programmer time. Payback time is less than 2 months. How's > that for short-term bottom line? While a Blit may improve a programmer's productivity 14%, it will not make her need 14% less benefits, 14% less plant, or 14% less supervision. In addition, this 14% probably applies to actually on-the-tube time, and I suspect that very few programmers will actually be at their desks all the time: meetings, conferences, netnews :-), etc. will eat into this. In addition, many shops -- like us -- are contractors where they charge out time to customers. While there is a long-term benefit in being more productive (happy customers = higher rates), the short-term payback is not as clear. Finally, nobody in *our* shop costs us $100k per year by any measure of cost, and for many smaller operations this will be the case. On the other hand, I think that 14% is a little low. The ref given only talks about the difference between 24 lines and 60 line terminals, but I would suspect that adding windows to this equation will make a significant difference on the upside. Remember, I really do support bitmapped interfaces, and in any shop with expensive employees the benefits are overwhelming (assuming the system software with handle it), but one must be careful not to present an argument that will get shot down. Steve -- Stephen J. Friedl 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com V-Systems, Inc. I speak for me only attmail!vsi!friedl Santa Ana, CA USA +1 714 545 6442 {backbones}!vsi!friedl ---------Nancy Reagan on Hawaiian musicians: "Just say Ho"--------
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) (01/16/89)
In article <1013@vsi.COM> friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: >In article <9325@smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes: >> How, indeed, is one to reduce the advantages of >> increased flexibility and convenience to a specific dollar value? >In article <4876@mtgzz.att.com>, avr@mtgzz.att.com (a.v.reed) writes: >> With figures. ... >... one must be careful not to present an argument that will get shot down. Exactly. Once you start to play the American business manager's own game, you will lose. There are SO many factors in doing a proper job of economic analysis, including estimating probabilities of future trends, that you will never get the job done "right". And many of the thing s you leave out can be used to "support" the contrary position. This is a case where intuition and vision count for a lot, but those don't lend themselves to cost-accounting techniques.