A dedication

I'd like to dedicate this blog, not to my mom, or wife, of children, or (god forbid) my employers. No, I'd like to dedicate this blog to someone who's simple law influences everything I do, not Isaac Newton, or Albert Einstein, or Pascal, or Turing, no none of those, my hero is Vilfredo Perato (1848-1923 ) an Italian lawyer/mathematician belwow is a representation of Perato's Law (in German of course);

Perato's law is more commonly known as the 80/20 law and put into English means that eighty percent of the results can be achieved with twenty percent of the effort, or 20 percent of people spend 80% of the money, or ...... My experiences have constantly proved and reproved Perato's law, how long does it take to get the basic design of a system in place? And then how long does it take to get to the finished product? The same applies to the physical implementation but at least everyone knows that this is an iterative process and accepts the 80/20 concept.

Another classic example of Perato's law in action is during testing, everyone knows that you can't test 100%, but in testing we know that it is by careful selection that we get maximum benefit; so remember - it's not just any old 80% of the work; you can't just say 'I'll do four fifths of the job and that will be the most effective way of working', you have to use intelligence in order to get the benefit. So you know about Perato, and you know about 80/20, how does this help? Well, we'll come back to estimating later but be aware that the 'full' job will take five times longer than the solution you probably first had in mind.

An alternative to the 80/20 law is my own 95/95 law which says that when 95% of the task is complete the remaining 5% will require another 95% effort, but;

Perato Rules OK!.