R – Proving that replacing hardware will improve developer performance

developer-machineperformancevisual studio

Now the machines we are forced to use are 2GB Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3GHz CPU…

The policy within the company is that everyone has the same computer no matter what and that they are on a 3 year refresh cycle… Meaning I will have this machine for the next 2 years… :S

We have been complaining like crazy but they said they want proof that upgrading the machines will provide exactly X time saving before doing anything… And with that they are only semi considering giving us more RAM…

Even when you put forward that developer resources are much more expensive than hardware, they firstly say go away, then after a while they say prove it. As far as they are concerned paying wages comes from a different bucket of money to the machines and that they don't care (i.e. the people who can replace the machines, because paying wages doesn't come from their pockets)…

So how can I prove that $X benefit will be gained by spending $Y on new hardware…

The stack I'm working with is as follows: VS 2008, SQL 2005/2008. As duties dictate we are SQL admins as well as Web/Winform/WebService Developers. So its very typical to have 2 VS sessions and at least one SQL session open at the same time.

Cheers
Anthony

Best Answer

Actually, the main cost for your boss is not the lost productivity. It is that his developers don't enjoy their working conditions. This leads to:

  • loss of motivation and productivity
  • more stress causing illness
  • external opportunities causing developers to go away