I like the article. I think, in general, (project) management could learn a lot from computer science. People working on operating systems etc. figured out solutions to a lot of problems like scheduling and so on.
Another similar penalty with humans that is often ignored is caching of skills into working memory.
For example, consider a process, like writing an expense, that is really simple. Because it's simple, it might be tempting not have a specialized person do it and instead having every person do it on the need basis. But then, if it's done only rarely, people will have to learn it each time, or ask somebody how to do it, spending lot more time on it due to what are pretty much cache misses, and it would be more efficient to have a specialist do it, because then he would do it every day and had all the process corner cases in working memory.
Similar problem with caching happens when say a programmer multitasks on several different things at a time. In that case, the cache (working memory) is completely trashed every time a task is switched.
For example, consider a process, like writing an expense, that is really simple. Because it's simple, it might be tempting not have a specialized person do it and instead having every person do it on the need basis. But then, if it's done only rarely, people will have to learn it each time, or ask somebody how to do it, spending lot more time on it due to what are pretty much cache misses, and it would be more efficient to have a specialist do it, because then he would do it every day and had all the process corner cases in working memory.
This is true, but it's important to remember that people aren't machines. Going too far down the division-of-labour route risks losing sight of what you're actually trying to achieve. Certainly in my case, that makes it a lot harder to perform my best, and it reduces the chance of spotting different ways to slice-and-dice the problem.
I was in an organization where they decided to cut the "indirect labor" cost, which for some reason included secretaries but not engineers. So, fewer secretaries means more of the tasks they used to do for engineers, the engineers now had to do themselves. So, instead of one secretary doing travel expense reports for a couple dozen engineers, and doing them efficiently and well, you had a couple dozen engineers who don't do it often enough to know how, doing it badly and over a much longer (and more highly compensated) time. Multiply this by many different kinds of administrative tasks.
Another similar penalty with humans that is often ignored is caching of skills into working memory.
For example, consider a process, like writing an expense, that is really simple. Because it's simple, it might be tempting not have a specialized person do it and instead having every person do it on the need basis. But then, if it's done only rarely, people will have to learn it each time, or ask somebody how to do it, spending lot more time on it due to what are pretty much cache misses, and it would be more efficient to have a specialist do it, because then he would do it every day and had all the process corner cases in working memory.
Similar problem with caching happens when say a programmer multitasks on several different things at a time. In that case, the cache (working memory) is completely trashed every time a task is switched.