Savan asks about dev to PM to test ratios.
At Redfin we are targeting a 1 PM to 5 devs to 1 tester ratio but these days we seem to be stalled at 1 PM to 3-4 devs to 1 tester. As one of those PMs I think 1 PM to 3-4 devs is manageable (I am able to keep up with the developers) but 5 devs would be bordering on unmanageable (I would not be able to keep up with the developers.) As for test, initially our releases involved a lot of test time (a month for every two months of development) because we were operating under the model of the tester having to prove the code was broken. We have since taken a test first approach and developers now need to prove their code is correct through unit tests. This is significantly reducing our test time and so 1 tester per 3-5 devs is proving to be manageable in that department as well.
Back when I worked on Windows Media Center at Microsoft we had a 1 PM to 1-2 devs to 1 tester ratio. I found this ratio to mean that I spec’d a lot of stuff that never shipped because we never had the developer capacity which was quite demoralizing. At Redfin I know that what I spec will ship either this release or next. We don’t waste a lot of time writing specs that don’t ship.
Heh, my past experiences are slightly different.
I’m more used to about 3 PMs per 50-100 devs. Most feature specifications would come from senior devs, pms, and customer facing sales reps. (at most, 10 people).