How to justify a workstation upgrade

Question

If you are finding your current workstation a pain to work with, how can you successfully justify an upgrade to management?

Answer 1

List out why it is a pain to work with and how unproductive you are because of it. If the productivity loss costs are high enough they will agree. Of course a boss should be able to take care of his workers without always having to pull out a spreadsheet.

Answer 2

Quantify the pain. Explain that the build is taking 10 minutes and with a new machine it would take 5. Explain that you build many many times a day and that the machine would more than make up for it in that time.

Also explain that the frustration from frequent pausing and disk thrashing makes you less productive than you would be if you weren't constantly fighting your tools.

Tell them machines are cheap now and you'll do your best to research the most cost effective upgrade.

Answer 3

Explain the cost/benefit of time wasted on a slow machine vs increased productivity you would gain from a better machine. Cost of time spent waiting for your machine versus the cost of the upgrade is normally fairly persuasive.

Answer 4

If the upgrade involves, or is just for a larger/additional monitor, I find an excellent way to justify it is with a screenshot that shows how cluttered your workspace is. Opening your IDE with structure/project panes showing and demonstrating how cramped the code is and explaining the continued scrolling you must endure usually works very well, especially given the correlation between over-use of mouse and carpal-tunnel type injuries.

Answer 5

Is there a way that you can get an IDE (like Visual Studio) to automatically track the amount of time that builds take?

A detailed metric showing the accumulated time spent waiting for compilation could be a compelling argument.

Answer 6

show him this:

better computer=less compile time :)

Answer 7

This question needs some background before I think I could give a solid answer but...

1. How long have you had the machine? > 2 years?
2. What Dev Environment do you use?
3. Explain you want to move to a new OS for testing/usability and you think the new hardware is a more realistic scenario?
4. Tell you boss why your having trouble and see if he will help get it through purchasing?

Answer 8

You need to be able to speak the language of the business, not just the computer. Understand that the language of business is money. You need to justify to your boss, or whomever is a roadblock, that at the end of the day, the business has a bigger pile of money if they make the investment in new hardware. In order to do this, you need to

1. Quantify how much your productivity will increase weekly
2. Quantify how much new hardware will cost.

You can the make the argument that after some period, the business will have a bigger pile of money.

A graph such as this can help justify and visualize the decision. Money going out of the business is below the line, money coming into the business is above the line. For the decision, should we buy new hardware for a developer, you can easily summarize the cost and when the business recovers the investment.

Approaching the problem as "This is the best thing for the business" instead of "This is the best thing for me" may give you more traction. Plus, thinking about software engineering decisions in terms of cost/benefit will demonstrate to your boss that you are thinking outside of the cube.

Answer 9

This is one of those "where should I work" questions. When asking yourself if this is the right job for you, be sure to factor in working conditions, including quiet space, comfortable changes, and good computers.

Be sure to read:

• The Bionic Office
• 12 Steps to Better Code

In addition, here are some articles about multimon. I remember reading one article that found that an odd number of monitors was good: an even number made it unclear where the center of focus should be. Next time I set up a serious programming desk, I think I'm going for a 30" wide-screen in the middle, and a 20" 4x3 on either side, turned sideways. Or something like that. The goal is to get vert. resolution and physical height on all 3 to be the same.

Answer 10

Tell your boss it is an excellent machine, and the new coder guy will adore it. For you, it would be strategic for the code to keep pace with what is sold today to the end user. One shot spenditures never icth business men.