hyazawa

	Is Mill's proposal still relevant today?  I understand that conceptual
integrity is important and that the best way- perhaps the only way- to
achieve such is to keep the creative vision during implementation clear, by 
including the fewest possible coders and designers in the project as possible.
However, of Mill's ten-person team, at most only four of them will be coding: 
the surgeon, who's responsible for the bulk of the work, the copilot, the
tester, and the toolsmith.  In our own ten-person project team, do three of
us limit our project involvement to secretarial work and one of us our language
arts skills?  Maybe it's only me, but I think that the types of projects that
are feasibly large for our class have to be modified if so.
    Mill's proposal was written in 1971.  The base ideas in it are still true,
but in light of the advances in communication technology I think some of the
roles can be cut.  I don't think a program clerk has a full time job anymore.
I also have a hard time believing that two secretaries are needed.  Why does
Mill have the surgeon be responsible for writing documentation?  I asked what
the standard in todays industry was in class, and the answer was that 
programmers do not write the documentation.  Perhaps Mills is talking of a
different type of documentation, but if not I don't see why each group needs
a seperate editor.
  For our own group projects, I think that Mill's team can be reduced so that
three surgical groups can fit.  The roles I see are: three surgeons, two
copilots, three testers, one toolsmith, one administrator/editor/language
lawyer.  To solve disputes, one surgeon must be the head-surgeon.  Mill's is
adament about the efficiency of heirarchy.  This seems like the best 
arrangement to get the most coding hours out of three weeks and have
everyone on the team have a computer science related cs190 final project
experience.