Why Is Software Always Ninety Percent Done?
It’s one of the great mysteries of information technology.
“Hey, Phil, how are you coming on that subsystem?”
“Pretty good. I’m about 90 percent done.”
“Oh. Weren’t you 90 percent done a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yes, but now I’m really 90 percent done!”
The fact that software projects and tasks are reported to be “90 percent done” for a long time is something of an industry joke. (A related joke states that the first half of a software project consumes the first 90 percent of the resources, and the second half consumes the other 90 percent of the resources.) This well-intentioned but misleading status tracking makes it difficult to judge when a body of work will truly be completed so you can ship the next product release to your customers. Here are several typical causes of “90 percent done” syndrome and a few possible cures.
Cause #1: Inadequate Task Planning
You might have actually finished 90 percent of the tasks you originally thought were needed to complete some body of work, only to discover that there was a lot more work involved than you thought. This often happens when implementing a change in an existing system, as you keep encountering additional…
