If we didn’t have those heuristics, it’d be hard to figure out whether undertaking project X for price Y is a good idea — either for the independent worker, or for the client.

In the same way that people try to turn the 80/20 rule (which is more of an analogy) into a law of physics, people end up turning rules of thumb into micrometers.

Years ago, with a group of my peers who headed computer-based training in their organizations (large companies like John Deere, Holiday Inn, USAir, Amtrak), we tried to dig up some benchmarks for the amount of time to produce courses — almost all of which were for training people to use the company’s main computer application.

In other words, we roughly agreed on what activities would go into design and development, and used the system’s tracking to get some idea of average completion time.

The end rations ran from 40:1 (development time to average completion time) to 400:1. The variables were pretty much what you’d expect: existing skill of the target audience, degree of simulation, complexity of the interaction, etc.

I would say, though, that in my work — training people who used the Amtrak reservation system — it was through this kind of benchmarking that we got better at rough-estimating how long the next task might take. If you can’t estimate within an order of magnitude (is it four weeks, or forty?), you need a mighty confident client.

Which is part of the point I see you making, Harold: the contractor and the client have to agree on the desired results, and neither can be too rigid about the path to achieving them.

I generally agree with Gilbert’s points, but supposedly we have a well-educated work force, doncha know. I’d argue that we need kless “education” and more learning, one-mindedness and much better collaboration skills .. s different sort of “well-educated”, I suppose.

Yes, we will have to learn to deliver in asynchoronous ways.

ROWE is more complex and requires a well educated work force. It requires skills sets suited for results oriented work.

I have seen first hand how difficult it is to implement result oriented approaches in the IT project management field. For results oriented to succeed you need a critical mass of team players that really understand the approach. You also need well educated managers and project managers that understand results oriented.

Time,motion, and method studies are still required with results oriented. I would even say that they are more important with results oriented than with time oriented. Time is a scarce resource for any living being and proper use of time and energy will always be important.

I think the problems with time based is more one of synchronous vs asynchronous. The industrial revolution create the synchronous man. (everyone eats at the same hour). Information technologies and transportation now makes it possible to return to asynchronous production modes.

Note that Results oriented will also transform considerably over the next few years. That concept will adapt to a network/packet paradigm and we should see smaller and smaller parcels for delivery by one production unit. The baby boomers will soon be out of the production processes.

In my opinion we will get better yield if we think in terms of synch/asynch rather that time vs results oriented. We will have to learn how to deliver in asynchronous manners.

Gilbert