Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#2Love the analogy!
The worst is when you finished the last 20% and get out of traffic only to discover you drove to the wrong city ;)
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#3I finished a couple years ago. I'm not really doing anything.
God says... chambers it_was_nothing contend clog countryman ALL inebriation links
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#4Simple, when you said you where 80% done...you actually weren't (presuming your metric is time).
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#5Wow I totally agree. And it's probably why I don't finish anything, because I am conditioned to expect it to be same work as earlier.
Not just for this, but almost everything.
The Paredo Time Principle?
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#6I knew a manager whose favorite saying was that we just needed to do the 20% of the work that got us 80% of the way there.
Well, needless to say, he never got a minimal viable product out there.
It definitely makes sense to be "lean" and not do anything that doesn't need to be done, but if you're lean you still need to complete 100% of the MVP.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#7That's the most annoying comma I've seen in a while. :) Great article though.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#8In 2002 Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% most reported bugs, 80% of the errors and crashes would be eliminated.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#9Simple, when you said you where 80% done...you actually weren't (presuming your metric is time).
How to measure a project's progress? If time is your metric, then the last 20% should be done in 20% of the total time. (And that's right, when the OP says she was 80% done, she actually was 50% done.)
If your metric is something else, what could it be? And perhaps it is not the best metric after all: a loading progress bar that goes quickly to 80% and then slows down (by a factor of 4) until the end may not be the best progress bar after all.
I guess that the difficulty is to get a precise idea of the time you need to finish something.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#10Simple, when you said you where 80% done...you actually weren't (presuming your metric is time).
You have a very good point; it can be very difficult to judge how far you are through a project. In retrospect, time is often the best metric.