Ninety Ninety Rule of Programming
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
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.
In short that’s the tongue in cheek ninety ninety rule of programming. Its doesn’t take a genius to realise the rule accounts for 180% of the project and this could be in many ways apportioned to the failure on our part to fully appreciate the harder parts of the project.
What I also take away from the ninety ninety rule is that preparation and research are integral early components of successful technical design – whether its a web site, an application or a mobile gaming midlet. It becomes very difficult to foresee what you never attempted to understand. In web design this is particularly noticable at the lower end of the market where there’s no budget allowed for generating technical specification and design reports. Its also a noticable flaw as a part of the newbie process of reading the design brief and then instantly opening Photoshop or a code editor and jumping right in. While lack of process works for a few I’d suggest it doesn’t for the many.
Rule of all rules – it is often more expensive to fix a problem if you discover it in the later stages of a project.
Its important to be aware of the ninety ninety rule so we make every effort to keep our project on track, in time and in budget.
