Businesses have important reasons to establish targets independent of software estimates. But the fact that a target is desirable or even mandatory does not necessarily mean that it is achievable.
— Steve McConnell, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
We need precise language about what we want, what we predict, and what we promise.
A spike is a sudden, dramatic increase in demand, effort, or activity that far exceeds normal operating levels. I consider spikes a threat to sustainability.
Startup culture’s reliance on the veneer of coolness and a potential future payoff as a way to fortify employees against these spikes will shape the workforce, selecting for younger people who are more naive and risk tolerant. The effects of this compound over time.
(noun) A mathematical function used to reduce noise, eliminate sharp transitions, or approximate data with a continuous curve that follows the general trend while reducing fluctuations.
The machine learning model used smoothing functions to eliminate outliers from the training data.