3 ms·
The 80-20 rule: the last 20 percent of the work takes 80 percent of the time.
by lambda_obrien 6y ago
The 80-20 rule: the last 20 percent of the work takes 80 percent of the time.
- rossdavidh 6y agoI've hear it as, "the first 90% of the task takes the first 90% of the time, and the last 10% of the task takes the other 90% of the time." :)
- k3liutZu 6y agoAmin
- kqr 6y agoThe critical thing many people miss about this rule is that it applies recursively. So of the 20 % that takes 80 % of the time, in turn 20 % takes 80 % of that time. Go further and you get a 50-1 rule: 1 % of the work takes 50 % of the time. (Or, equivalently, 50 % of the time gets you 99 % of the way there.) This is a strong argument for clever scope reduction. Edit: To be clear, this is the Pareto distribution with α=1.16 -- and I don't think this applies to software implementation. The tail isn't quite that fat, in the data I've had access to. But the general idea still applies, except with less aggressive percentages!