Where I work, some mainframe guys at another department came up with a little formula for estimating "Programming and
Unit Testing" time for their work. They rank tasks according to perceived difficulty (let's call the difficulty levels A, B, C, and D) and according to type [is it a batch program? an online program (green screens and all)? an interface to the core system?]. So, they have a matrix model where cell (say) (B,1) corresponds to a medium-difficulty task in building an online program.
(The granularity of the "tasks" is in the range of 1-3 screens, 1-3 programs, up to 30 validations, 1 interface, ~2 reports).
Now, the issue is that our manager wishes that we adapt the above model to a Java/Web world. I.e. keeping the matrix the same, giving appropriate times for each task. And my question to all of you fellow-JavaRanchers is:
1) Do you believe that Java-based development is faster/slower or around the same time as mainframe (say COBOL) development. I have no exposure to the mainframe world whatsoever to make any meaningful conjectures... Is their anyone that has experience in both worlds that wishes to spare a thought here?
2) Would there be any sense in attempting to making a mapping from the tasks in the aforementioned model to tasks in our
Java world? For instance, I am thinking on what they term as "online programs" a collapsed View and Controller in an MVC world and their "interfaces" as what we term Model (with an emphasis to connectivity with a core system, rather than with also modelling concepts in the OO sense... Does this sounds reasonable to you?
Many, many thanks in advance!
Panagiotis Varlagas
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[ December 13, 2005: Message edited by: Jeanne Boyarsky ]