I was thinking about how the lunar month has 28 days, which nicely conforms to four weeks. Then I realized that if we made all the calendar months be four weeks long, that would be 48 weeks total, and there are 52 weeks (plus a day) in a year. Therefore, if we just added one more month, we would have 12 months with exactly 28 days and one month with 29 days. This seems so clean and simple, I was surprised that I never heard anybody mention this idea before. Fortunately, the all-knowing Internet was able to clue me in. A 13 month calendar was proposed back in 1849, and it seems the biggest drawback was that the quarters of the year would then be three months plus one week. This just seemed to weird people out, and the shortening of the months means that 29 days worth of birthdays/holidays would have to be re-done.

I was disappointed that the 13 month calendar was just too drastic a change to ever work, but I was fascinated by the World Calendar, which has been promoted since 1930. This calendar was discussed in the League of Nations and later in the United Nations, but it obviously never took hold. Fortunately, the US calendar is the same as the calendar used internationally, so we don’t have the whole Metric system versus the English system of measurement confusion all over again.

The World Calendar had the really cool effect of eliminating the need to buy a new calendar every year so that you will know what day of the week January 1st or any other holiday falls on. Even the 13 month calendar didn’t solve this problem. How did the World Calendar do it? They just added a week with eight days in it. There are 52 weeks in a year plus one day, so December 30th is a Saturday, December 31st is World Day, and January 1st is always a Sunday. Leap Day is also an extra day of the week, so it is also handled easily by the calendar. Just think how much time would be saved each year by the government and schools planning their calendar? April 15th would be on the same day of the week every year, and Thanksgiving would always be on November 23rd.

If the World Calendar could save so much time and effort as well as help the environment by reducing the number of calendars being printed each year, why was it unsuccessful. It appears that the World Calendar succumbed to one of the problems facing software development. Big Planning Up Front is the easiest way to plan the entire scope of the project, but it also creates the most risk that the project will never be approved or completed. Agile development would implement the most useful features first, so you will have some benefit from the project even if it is cancelled before everything is complete.

My biggest grip with Agile development is when people use it solve problems that don’t exist. If you have a one or two month project that doesn’t have a lot of risk of not being completed, there is no reason to break up the project into one week iterations. However, the World Calendar has been pushed for since 1930, so they definitely could benefit from breaking down their goals into smaller chunks. Here is an example of how we can split up this project to increase the odds of at least partial success:

• Step 1: Make December 31st and February 29th an extra day of the week. Now, every calendar will be the same except Leap Year, and Leap Year will only differ with Leap Day, so March 1st will continue to be on the same day of the week.
• Step 2: Make the quarters of the year more uniform. Currently, the quarters are 90 to 92 days. We can make the year have three 91 day quarters and one 92 day quarter on a normal year and two 91 day quarters and two 92 day quarters on a Leap Year. Just add February 29th every year and make August 31st be Leap Day.
• Step 3: Make the days of the week more uniform for each quarter. The first month of each quarter will have 31 days and the next two months will have 30 days. This is the most drastic change.
  • Extend February to have 30 days.
  • Shorten March to have 30 days.
  • Extend April to have 31 days since it is the first month of the quarter.
  • Shorten May to have 30 days.
• Step 4: Move Leap Day from August 31st to June 31st. I don’t think this step is worthwhile at all, but it does make the calendar exactly what was planned by the World Calendar Association.