MiscFormulas - Time & Effort & Interruptions

Time and Effort

The care and feeding of Management herds often requires numbers.  When you have to fill in something, here are some numbers that are real data, and defensible.  Keep in your Toolbox Spreadsheet*.

Quarterly Cheat Sheet (short)
% of time	is so many  work days	WW's (Work Week)	Hours
5%	3	.6 ww	24
8%	5	1 ww	40
10%	6	1.1 ww	48
15%	9	1.4 ww	72
25%	15	3 ww	120
50%	30	6 ww	240
75%	45	9 ww	360
95%	57	11.2 ww	456
100%	60	12 ww	480

Or the Management equivalent of making one baby in 1 month:

% of person	Days per year	WWs	aka	Weeks
5%	13	2.6	1 engr	3 weeks
10%	26	5.2	2 engr	2 weeks
20%	52	10.4	3 engr	4 weeks
25%	65	13	4 engr	8 weeks
50%	130	26
75%	195	39
100%	260	52

*Toolbox Spreadsheet - if you don't have one, make one.

Interruptions

It takes a programmer an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call, to get back to full programming mode from the point they left it.  Invisible work can eat up the workday.

How long does it take to recover from interruptions, and get back to work?

23 minutes 15 sec to get back to the task
http://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching

Interruptions every 11 minutes, 25 minutes to return to task

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/a-focus-on-distraction.html?_r=0

Control, Interrupt, On High Alert

A Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interactions Institute study showed, however, is that it is possible to train yourself for distractions, even if you don’t know when they’ll hit.

Links below are don't work anymore.  You may have to search on the site for this information.

http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2013/04/multitasking-interruptions-and-inevitable-problems-follow
Multitasking Interruptions and Inevitable Problems Follow

http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2004/10/work-fragmentation-common-practice-paradox-it-support
Work Fragmentation is a Common Practice and Paradox in IT Support