RULES OF ENGINEERING
PARKINSON'S
LAW
Work expands to fill the time
available for its completion.
PARKINSON'S LAW, MODIFIED
The components you have will
expand to fill the available space.
PEER'S LAW
The solution to a problem
changes the problem.
PETER PRINCIPLE
In every hierarchy, each
employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence.
PUDDER'S LAW
Anything that begins well
will end badly. Lawrence Corollary: The converse of Pudder's law is never
true.
RHODE'S COROLLARY TO HOARE'S
LAW
Inside every complex and
unworkable program is a useful routine struggling to be free.
ROBERT E. LEE'S TRUCE
Judgment comes from
experience; experience comes from poor judgment.
RUDIN'S LAW
In a crisis that forces a
choice to be made among alternative courses of action, people tend to choose the
worst possible course.
RYAN'S LAW
Make three correct guesses
consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert.
SATTINGER'S LAW
It works better if you plug
it in.
SAUSAGE PRINCIPLE
People who love sausage and
respect the law should never watch either one being made.
SHAW'S PRINCIPLE
Build a system that even a
fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
SNAFU EQUATIONS
1) Given any problem
containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.
2) An object or bit of information most needed will be least available.
3) Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.
4) Interchangeable devices won't.
5) In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and fail,
there will be one solution, simple and obvious, highly visible to everyone else.
6) Badness comes in waves.
LAWRENCE LAW OF RETRO ACTION
It is easier to get
forgiveness than permission.
DOW'S LAW
In a hierarchical
organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.
DR. CALIGARI'S COMEBACK
A bad sector disk error
occurs only after you've done several hours of work without performing a backup.
FINAGLES LAWS
1) Once a Job is fouled up,
anything done to improve it makes it worse.
2) No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to fake it.
3) No matter what the result, someone is always eager to misinterpret it.
4) No matter what occurs, someone believes it happened according to his pet
theory.
FINAGLES RULES:
1) To study an application
best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
2) Always keep a record of data. It indicates you've been working.
3) Always draw your curves, then plot the reading.
4) In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
5) Program results should always be reproducible. They should all fail in the
same way.
6) Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.
FINSTER'S LAW
A closed mouth gathers no
feet.
FIRST RULE OF HISTORY
History doesn't repeat itself
- historians merely repeat each other.
GILB'S LAWS OF UNRELIABILITY
1) At the source of every
error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors,
including the error of blaming it on the computer.
2) Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
3) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
errors, which by definition are limited.
4) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of
errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
BOB'S QUANDARY
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't even quit the game.
LIEBERMAN'S LAW
Everybody lies; but it
doesn't matter, since nobody listens.
MAY'S LAW
The quality of correlation is
inversely proportional to the density of control. (The fewer the data points,
the smoother the curves.)
LAWRENCE'S LAW
There's never time to do it
right, but always time to do it over.
MURPHY'S LAWS
1) If anything can go wrong,
it will (and at the worst possible moment).
2) Nothing is as easy as it looks.
3) Everything takes longer than you think it will.
MURPHY'S FOURTH LAW
If there is a possibility of
several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the
one to go wrong.
MURPHY'S LAW OF
THERMODYNAMICS
Things get worse under
pressure.
NINETY-NINETY RULE OF PROJECT
SCHEDULES
The first ninety percent of
the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the
other ninety percent.
NIXON'S THEOREM
The man who can smile when
things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.
NEYLAND'S PLACEBO
An ounce of image is worth a
pound of performance.
OLIVER'S LAW OF LOCATION
No matter where you are,
there you are.
O'REILLY'S LAW OF THE KITCHEN
Cleanliness is next to
impossible.
OSBORN'S LAW
Variables won't; Constants
aren't.
ALLEN'S (or CANN'S) AXIOM
When all else fails, read the
instructions.
BOREN'S FIRST LAW
When in doubt, mumble.
BOVE'S THEOREM
The remaining work to finish
in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.
BROOK'S LAW
Adding manpower to a late
project makes it later.
ATTILLA'S CONSOLATION
Nothing is ever a complete
failure; it can always serve as a bad example.
COHN'S S LAW
The more time you spend in
reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything.
Stability is achieved when you spend all your time reporting on the nothing you
are doing.
CONWAY'S LAW
In any organization there
will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
LAW OF CONTINUITY
Experiments should be
reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
CROPP'S LAW
The amount of work done
varies inversely with the amount of time spent in the office.
DEADLINE-DAN'S DEMO
DEMONSTRATION
The higher the
"higher-ups" are who've come to see your demo, the lower your chances
are of giving a successful one.
GREEN'S LAW OF DEBATE
Anything is possible if you
don't know what you're talking about.
GUMMIDGES'S LAW
The amount of expertise
varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the
general public.
GUMPERSON'S LAW
The probability of a given
event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability.
HANLON'S RAZOR
Never attribute to malice
that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
HARRISON'S POSTULATE
For every action, there is an
equal and opposite criticism.
HELLER'S LAW
The first myth of management
is that it exists.
HINDS' LAWS OF COMPUTER
PROGRAMMING
1) Any given program, when
running, is obsolete.
2) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
3) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
4) Any given program will expand 'to fill all available memory.
5) The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
6) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer
who must maintain it.
7) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and
you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
HOARE'S LAW OF LARGE PROGRAMS
Inside every large program is
a small program struggling to get out.
DENNISTON'S LAW
Virtue is its own punishment.
DOW'S LAW
In a hierarchical
organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.
DR. CALIGARI'S COMEBACK
A bad sector disk error
occurs only after you've done several hours of work without performing a backup.
LAWS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1) No
major project is ever
installed on time, within budgets, with the staff that started it. Yours will
not be the first.
2) Projects progress quickly until they become 90 percent
complete, then they remain at 90 percent complete forever.
3) One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let
you avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
4) When things are going well, something will go wrong. When
things just can't get any worse, they will. When things appear to be going
better you have overlooked something.
5) If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of
change will exceed the rate of progress.
6) No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug a
system inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.
7) A carelessly planned project will take three times longer
to complete than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as
long.
8) Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly
manifests their lack of progress.
DAVID'S LAWS OF APPLICATIONS
1) After months of training
and you finally understand all of a program's commands, a revised version of the
program arrives with an all-new command structure.
2) After designing a useful routine that gets around a familiar "bug"
in the system, the system is revised, the "bug" taken away, and you're
left with a useless routine.
3) Efforts in improving a program's "user friendliness" invariable
lead to work in improving user's "computer literacy".
4) That's not a "bug", that's a feature.
THYME'S LAW
Everything goes wrong at
once.
THE LAW OF THE TOO SOLID GOOF
In any collection of data,
the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the
errors.
Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either.
Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot
it immediately.
WEILER'S LAW
Nothing is impossible for the
man who doesn't have to do the work.
WHITEHEAD'S LAW
The obvious answer is always
overlooked.
WOOD'S AXIOM
As soon as a
still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a life-or-death situation, the power
fails.
HOWERTER'S SECOND LAW OF
EVOLVING SYSTEM DYNAMICS
Once you open a can of worms,
the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.
CANN'S (or ALLEN'S) AXIOM
When all else fails, read the
instructions.
LAWRENCE'S INSIGHT
When
your only tool is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail.
FISHER'S RULE
Given
a 50-50 question, you will get the answer wrong 90% of the time.
(Especially true with the rotation of 3 phase motors.)
JAMES' OBSERVATION
An expert is someone from out of town.