7 +or- 2

Imagine when you are putting the pieces together in your mind, to come up with a solution while you analyze the problem. Problem could be to come up with a business strategy, or to come up with the Domain Analysis classes for a given Business Domain, might be to come up with the list of methods in a class.

Well, could be just to come up with a brilliant dish, given the recipe, or to fix your love life in a way where you keep everybody happy except yourself ;). For a mum it could be to bring up her son well enough, considering the given external environments.

Life is all about putting the pieces together while considering the so called time axis. Aint it?

To cut the crap and come straight to the point, we have the fastest machine in the world to solve all our problems as per the given constraints. Yup the BRAIN.

But isn't there a point when we get mentally confused or are at an erratic stage or when things go hay-wire in mind? And we feel that the given problem/situation is too complex to be solved.

What is this intricacy? This COMPLEXITY? How to unravel?

The answer is simple. Even this machine has a maximum capacity to run a number of parallel processes. To be precise it is 8. The brain can only run 8 parallel processes at a time. Whenever we try to exceed this number, we face problems or difficulty to solve any problem.

Hence the concept of decomposition, so that we deal with no more than 8 things at a time. The Europeans call it a 7+or-2 problem.

We could use this theory to keep things simple and thus answer some unanswered questions.

Some of them applied in the Software industry could be : -
Q. Max no. of blocks in a block diagram?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of PLs under a PM?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of TLs under PL?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of team members under TL?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of methods in a class?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of objects in a sequence diagram?
A. 7 +or- 2

Q. Max no. of departments in an organization?
A. 7 +or- 2

I have a feeling though, that it is not a Mars/Venus issue, but the female brain's capacity is much more than male's anyway. Though a man would still not use the whole and the woman might still exceed her maximum :).