Boave’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 software project makes it later.

Canada Bill Jones Law
It is morally wrong to allow a naive user to keep their money.

Clarke’s Third Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Deadline Dan’s Demon
Every task takes twice as long as you think it will take. If you double the time you think it will take, it will take actually four times as long.

Dr. Caligari’s Come Back
A bad sector disk error occurs only after you have done several hours work without performing a backup.

Estrideg Law
No matter how large and standardised the market place is, IBM can redefine it.

Fingules Rules
To study an application understand it thoroughly before you start.
Always keep a record of test data, it indicates that you have been working.
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
Program results should always be reproducible. The should all fail in the same way.
Do not believe in miracles, rely on them.

Franklin’s Rules
Blessed is the end user who expects nothing for they shall not be disappointed.

Gibb’s Law of Un-reliability
At the source of every error which is blamed on a computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming the computer.
Any system that depends on human reliability is unreliable.
Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.

Gummide’s Law
The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the general public.

Harps Corollary To Estridges Law
You IBM PC compatible computer grows less compatible with every passing moment.

Hellers Law
The first myth of management is that it exists.

Hinds Law of Computer Programming
Any given program when running is obsolete.
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
A program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English and you will find that programmers can not speak English.

Hernes Law of A Large Program
Inside every large program there is a small program struggling to get out.

The Last Law of Program Generators
A program generator creates programs that are more buggy than the program generator.

Meskimens Law
There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over.

Murphy’s Fourth Law
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, then the one that causes 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 Management
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time and the last ten percent takes the other ninety.

Nixons Law
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame.

Nolans Placebo
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Osborns Law
Variables won’t, constants aren’t.

O’Tooles Commentary on Murphy’s Law
Murphy was an optimist.

Rhodes Corollary to Hoares Law
Inside every unworkable program there is a useful routine struggling to get out.

Robert E. Less’s True
Judgement comes with experience, experience comes from poor judgement.

Sattingers Law
It works better if you plug it in.

Shaw’s Principle
Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.

SNAFU Equations
Given a problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.
An object or bit of information most needed will be the least accessible.
Any devise requiring service adjustment will be the least accessible.
Interchangeable devices don’t.
In human endeavour, once you have exhausted all possibilities and fail, there will be one solution, both simple and obvious to everyone else.
Badness comes in waves.

Thoreau’s Theories of Adaptation
After several months of training you finally understand all of a programs commands, a revised version of the program arrives with an all new command structure.
After designing a routine that gets around a familiar bug in the system, the system is revised, the bug is taken away and you are left with a useless routine.
Efforts in improving user friendliness invariable lead to work in improving users computer literacy.
That is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Weinbergs Collary
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Weinbergs Law
If a builder built buildings the way programmers write programs then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilisation.

Zymurgy’s Law of Evolving System Dynamics
Once you open a can of worms they only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.