{"id":3398,"date":"2023-12-17T17:51:23","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T01:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/?p=3398"},"modified":"2023-12-17T17:52:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T01:52:01","slug":"the-pi-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/2023\/12\/17\/the-pi-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"The pi rule"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These days things are getting pretty busy on my end \u2013 so many cool projects to engage with and only 24 hours a day.<\/p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/boingboing.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/typingfast.gif\" width=\"220\" height=\"146\" \/><\/p>And you end up doing more things that you can accomplish. The reason often lies in the unrealistic assessment of the time it would take to complete a task, and I came across <strong>the &#8220;pi&#8221; rule<\/strong>, initially posited by my mentor Ken, with a pretty neat explanation from my colleague Val:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you estimate it will take one unit of time to complete a task, the task will effectively take 3.14 (\u2248\u03c0) times more than you initially anticipated.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>The reason for the difference between dream and reality\u00a0 is that we generally do not factor in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>(1) the time it takes to ease into the task (e.g. collecting documentation, emails) and<\/li>\n<li>(2) the time requires to document the work done (reports, emails)<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>Taken together with the times its take to accomplish a task, you end up with roughly a factor three \u2013 and you end up feeling terrible during the week-ends trying to catch up what you were set to do during the week, but got busy doing (1) or (2)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Weekends are a constant battle between \u201cI should do all the work I put off during the week!\u201d and \u201ctaking time off is important to recharge!\u201d but it\u2019s okay because I usually find a nice compromise in which I lounge around feeling guilty and accomplishing nothing<\/p>&mdash; Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AstroKatie\/status\/1426979365326409732?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/x.com\/AstroKatie\/status\/1426979365326409732?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw', 'August 15, 2021']);\" >August 15, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>A corollary of the pi rule is the &#8220;next up&#8221; rule: if you work on project with a relatively large team, it generally takes the next unit of time to complete it (e.g. one hour become one day; one day becomes a week; a week becomes a months), generally because of the friction at the interfaces. Reducing these frictions at the interfaces should therefore be a priority.<\/p>\n<h3>Engineering interfaces in big science collaborations<\/h3><p>I recently learned that my colleague Bertrand Nicquevert has worked extensively on a model to describe interactions between various counterparts:<\/p><em>Modelling engineering interfaces in big science collaborations at CERN: an interaction-based model<br \/>\n<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/cds.cern.ch\/record\/2808723?ln=fr\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/cds.cern.ch\/record\/2808723?ln=fr', 'https:\/\/cds.cern.ch\/record\/2808723?ln=fr']);\" >https:\/\/cds.cern.ch\/record\/2808723?ln=fr<\/a><\/p><!--more--><\/p>Here are two salient excerpt from the paper:<\/p><a href=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/middle-manager-nicquevert.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-3362 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/middle-manager-nicquevert.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"408\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/middle-manager-nicquevert.png 880w, http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/middle-manager-nicquevert-300x94.png 300w, http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/middle-manager-nicquevert-768x241.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 408px) 100vw, 408px\" \/><\/a><\/p>And a descriptive schematic of the collective role of the middle managers.<\/p><a href=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3363 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert-1024x640.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"580\" height=\"363\" srcset=\"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert-1024x640.png 1024w, http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert-300x187.png 300w, http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert-768x480.png 768w, http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/interfaces-nicquevert.png 1322w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>One issue in the scientific enterprise is that we rarely hire project managers for projects (we take from the pool of scientists or engineers and give them superficial training at best.) This is particularly glaring in projects involving software engineering, where interfaces are very loosely defined \u2013 which is partly why things have moved from the waterfall approach to the <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/book\/10.1007\/978-3-319-05155-0\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/link.springer.com\/book\/10.1007\/978-3-319-05155-0', 'agile method']);\" >agile method<\/a>. But even for the agile method (maybe more acutely so) you need a project manager.<\/p>.:.<\/p>Here&#8217;s the complete thesis (in French)<\/p><em>Manager l&#8217;interface. Approche par la complexit\u00e9 du processus collaboratif de conception, d&#8217;int\u00e9gration et de r\u00e9alisation : mod\u00e8le transactionnel de l&#8217;acteur d&#8217;interface et dynamique des espaces d&#8217;\u00e9changes<\/em><\/p><a href=\"https:\/\/theses.hal.science\/tel-00789791v2\/document\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/theses.hal.science\/tel-00789791v2\/document', 'https:\/\/theses.hal.science\/tel-00789791v2\/document']);\" >https:\/\/theses.hal.science\/tel-00789791v2\/document<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days things are getting pretty busy on my end \u2013 so many cool projects to engage with and only 24 hours a day.And you end up doing more things that you can accomplish. The reason often lies in the unrealistic assessment of the time it would take to complete a task, and I came [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-mood","category-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3403,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions\/3403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}