Laws of Web Design and
Development
A compilation by Praveen <apnerve@gmail.com>

Brookes' Law
“Adding manpower to a late
software project makes it even
later.”

Parkinson’s Law
“Work expands so as to fill the
time available for its
completion.”

Hoare’s Law
“Inside every large problem is
a small problem struggling to
get out.”

Lister’s Law
“People under time pressure
don’t think faster.”

Pareto Principle
“For many phenomena, 80%
of consequences stem from
20% of the causes.”

The Peter
Principle
“In a hierarchy, every
employee tends to rise to his
level of incompetence.”

Conway’s Law
“Any piece of software reflects
the organizational structure
that produced it.”

Fitts’ Law
“The time taken to acquire a
target is a function of the
distance to and the size of the
target.”

Tesler’s Law
“You cannot reduce the complexity
of a given task beyond a certain
point. Once you’ve reached that
point, you can only shift the
burden around.”

Occam’s Razor
“The explanation requiring
the fewest assumptions is
most likely to be correct.”

Hofstadter’s Law
“A task always takes longer
than you expect, even when
you take into account
Hofstadter’s Law.”

Ninety-ninety Law
“The first 90% of the code
accounts for the first 10% of the
development time. The remaining
10% of the code accounts for the
other
90% of the development time.”

Hartree’s Law
“Whatever the state of a
project, the time a project­
leader will estimate for
completion is constant.”

Jakob’s Law
“Users spend most of their time on
other sites. This means that users
prefer your site to work the same
way as all the other sites they
already know.”

Fisher’s Fundamental
Theorem
“The more highly adapted an
organism becomes, the less
adaptable it is to any new
change.”