May 15, 2003

Ninety-Ninety Rule

n.

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985 Bumper-Sticker Computer Science column in Communications of the ACM. It was there called the Rule of Credibility, a name which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include the law attributed to the early British computer scientist Douglas Hartree: The time from now until the completion of the project tends to become constant.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:36 AM

Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?