Understanding HeadcountUnderstanding Headcount

It is that time of the year. Enterprise IT architects everywhere are nervously watching the economic and financial mess, and crossing their fingers as they put in budget requests for investment in 2.0 infrastructure in the coming year. Much of the cost of IT is human labor, since at one end of the spectrum, the software pieces can actually be free (yes, as in beer). So I thought I'd share this picture I drew for a long riff on headcount on ribbonfarm.com. What do IT architects think? Whimsical, thought-provoking, silly, or all of the above? Are you thinking about headcount and resource planning any differently around 2.0? How do you actually decide how to assign people to different projects? How do you actually estimate resource needs?Venkatesh G. Rao writes a blog on business and innovation at www.ribbonfarm.com, and is a Web technology researcher at Xerox. The views expressed in this blog are his personal ones and do not represent the views of his employer.