I often repeat a quote that I remember from my apprentice days that goes:
90% of the development work is done in 10% of the time, the last 90% of the time accounts for the remaining 10% of code.
Today I found a similar one (that makes me think I remembered it wrong):
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
The reason I bring this up is that we sometime lose track of the finishing line. What is the goal? When are we done? How much effort do we spend on a task?
Me being Swedish and all, I like the word Lagom. Lagom is perhaps not very ambitious, but it gets the job done. When you’ve reached the 90% line, take a step back, go for a fika, invite someone to look at your work. Maybe you’re done, maybe you went in the wrong direction and need to restart, but at least you’ve only spent the 10%, so reworking it is cheaper.
Why not give lagom a go, start today already: go for a lagom long walk, have a lagom portion of cake, take a lagom nap and then spend some lagom time working on that issue/project. Just remember to do lagom, lagom much, you don’t want to exaggerate, that wouldn’t be lagom...
Senior Consultant
Application and web technology have never moved at a faster pace than today. What is all hot one day is old hat the next. To keep Optima on the bleeding edge and future proof, Gilgamesh was appointed the chief of Research and Development.
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