The analogy is nice, but I'd enhance it a little bit to emphasize the responsibility of, ahem, driver and make all of this more useful.
Unless it isn't his first trip to the city, the driver needs to reduce his optimism about the arrival time. Especially at the beginning when he has a lot of time, he needs to avoid all those tempting things like: playing with his new GPS to design the best route; exploring the new and/or intriguing parts of suburbia, changing the cars for fun and so long ...
Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#22In case the site isn't loading for you (wasn't for me):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.mat...
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#23The analogy is nice, but I'd enhance it a little bit to emphasize the responsibility of, ahem, driver and make all of this more useful. Unless it isn't his first trip to the city, the driver needs to reduce his optimism about the arrival time. Especially at the beginning when he has a lot of time, he needs to avoid all those tempting things like: playing with his new GPS to design the best route; exploring the new an…
This a million times. To continue the analogy:
Only with experience will the driver know approximately how long the drive should take. Read about the traffic all you want, but until you drive there multiple times, try not to give a set arrival time (or prepare to arrive late).
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#24Love this analogy because you can extrapolate it even further.
I'm the kind of guy that travels the first 80% on the highway, reaches the traffic-bloated city, and actually makes a U-turn to head towards a totally new city, thinking "I'll visit that city later".
Or, quite often, halfway towards my destination (let's say 40%), I'll see a board saying "Next exit: even better city", and take that exit. After taking a few of these exits, I will have spent hours or even days on the highway, without having reached any city, or even coming close to one.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#25Great Analogy, the basic idea is similar to this quora post (linked below) both in the travel metaphor and the fact that both deal with software development effort estimation:
http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software...
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#26Great analogy. This is just the thing I wanted to see. I am in that last 20% phase with my project and it really is a lot more work to get to a 100%.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#27Lol, am I the only one who thought of Michael Douglas in "Falling Down" while reading the last paragraph?
Now the analogy is complete.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#28Simple, 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.
Time is a great metric, but the total is only known when you're done. Before that, you need other metrics that you can compare to your estimates, if you want to be able to correct.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#29Because we get bored.
Re: Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
#30The saying is something like: once you're 90% done, you're halfway done.
For code, it's because you've solved all the easy stuff and can finally see a product. It's the unexpected UX problems along with the dumb-but-hard-to-solve bugs you're now handling.