A less male gender focused way of saying a “man-year”, a common term to imply the amount of effort, rather than an exact duration.
If someone says it’ll take 3 person-years (just to make it gender agnostic), that means if only one person was working, it’d take about 3 years. It implies that theoretically 3 people could do it in one year, 6 people in 6 months.
It’s not a definitive statement, especially if one has read mythical man month and buys into it, but gives a very tough scoping.
Interesting choice of words beyond just gender. 'Girl' is roughly analogous to 'boy', both implying reduced age. Considering how proficient teenagers are these days, I suppose the terminology is not that far-fetched.
This is what threw me for a loop. I speak in person-hours at work even when other people speak of man-hours, but hearing someone speak in girl or boy-hours is a bit jarring due to the implications around age and experience.
If someone says it’ll take 3 person-years (just to make it gender agnostic), that means if only one person was working, it’d take about 3 years. It implies that theoretically 3 people could do it in one year, 6 people in 6 months.
It’s not a definitive statement, especially if one has read mythical man month and buys into it, but gives a very tough scoping.