Useful Laws of Management
Occasionally, an experienced professional will offer an insight so concise and succinct that further elaboration is unnecessary. The tidbits included here are not intended represent anything like a complete list. A principal is added to this list based on clarity and utility. When in doubt, pure preference and resonance with experience govern the decision. Additions, including humorous ones, are always welcome. By submitting a suggestion, you agree to allow us to post it, of course. The order is alphabetical.
| St. Bernard's Admonition: | You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward vision. |
| Bormel's Principle: | When in doubt, do the right thing. |
| Brasington's Ninth Law: | A carelessly planned project
takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned one
will take only twice as long. |
| Clarke's Law: | Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. |
| Heinlein's Insight: | Specialization is for insects.
|
| Hofstadter's Law: | The time and
effort required to complete a project are always more than you expect,
even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. |
| Holt's Law: | A good paper workflow is always more efficient than a bad automated one.
|
| Holt's Theorem: | Outcomes will either be better
than expected or half as bad as the worst case.
|
| Mansfield's Guidance: | Make it work, then make it pretty.
|
| Meyer's Law: | Any
technology used or deployed for a purpose for which it was not designed
will eventually and inconveniently fail.
|
| Meyer's Paradox: | The
technical feature(s) you desire the most you should use the least. [This
is not always self-evident, but dependence on the differentiating feature of
an application can leave you stuck in an unsupportable spot in the future.]
|
| Nogg's Postulate: | Any system
that depends on reliability is unreliable.
|
| Pfeffer's Law | Instead of being interested in what is new, we ought to be interested in what is true.
|
| Scherer's Corollary: | Variation
from the vendor's implementation instructions is a certain and direct
path to unhappiness.
|
| Sutton's Law | If you think that you have a new idea, you are wrong. Someone probably already had it. This idea isn't original either; I stole it from someone else.
|
| Westheimer's Discovery: | A couple of months in the
laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library. |