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One person hour (in former times "“man-hour, on English "“person Hour"” mentioned)"” is the quantity of work, which creates a person on the average in one hour. One uses this term, in order to calculate estimations for the total quantity at work for the completion of a task. For example one needs perhaps twenty person hours, in order to write a small essay or ten person hours, in order to prepare a large family meal.

Person hours do not contain time for tracing, it stand for the pure work time. If one wants to calculate the total time for a task, must be considered additional tracing. The small essay specified above is interrupted not in twenty sequential hours finished, but by other tasks, meals, sleep and other diversons.

Applications

An area of application of the person hour computation is the estimation of team size and total period of a project. However simply the number of person hours may not to be divided be able to let grow by the number of team members, just as few as nine Mrs. a child in one month. There are straight for software systems many formulas, which consider certain minimum period of projects and the different degrees of difficulty. (see Barry Boehm, "“software Metrics"”)

Only with assembly line work it is possible to create by the attitude of further coworkers for more work or to create existing work faster.

A problem with the pure computation from person hours is, as Fred Brooks showed the fact that organization, training and co-ordination of activities could take more time up than theoretically by adding further team members is saved.

Person years

A similar concept, person years, is used for very large projects. It is the work quantity, which works on the average a person during a yearly. This depends naturally on the usual work week duration, as well as on the number of days of holiday, which vary from the country to country strongly. As value however often 2000 person hours of a person yearly one uses.

See also

  • Work (economics)
  • Taylorismus
  • Frederick Winslow Taylor
  • Henry Gantt
  • Franc shelter Gilbreth
  • The Mythical one Month, Fred Brooks classical software engineering book

Literature

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Person year


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