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Please tell me your 80 / 20 rule(s). May 14, 2007

I’m reworking my Best Practices for Web Development
(html,
pdf
) essay into a full-fledged book with much more info and along the way the 80/20
rule, or Pareto Principle, has worked itself in. But, in thinking about it I’ve
realized that there are many applications of the 80/20 rule in software and many
of them don’t have anything to do with Pareto’s original observation. So, I’ve
started putting together a list of the basic 80/20 rules that exist in the
software industry.  So far I have the following and a few others that are almost the reverse (but I just started
really):

• 80% of your results come from 20% of your work
• 80% of your problems come from the same 20% of causes.
• 80% of your project is characterized by the initial 20% of decisions
  (framework, language, infrastructure, and metaphor choices mostly).

I would really appreciate it if you’d take a minute to drop me an e-mail at
masukomi at masukomi dot org or left a comment here for all to see with your 80
/ 20 rules.

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