[jen729w]

After many years in large infrastructure transformation projects, Johnny’s Rule of Threes now goes like this:

1. The first time you do something, you can guess how long it will take and what the detailed steps will be, but that is all. You should still plan it, but during execution of this phase you must take copious notes. Do not expect it to be correct.

2. After you have done something for the second time — using what you learned from the first time — you should end up with an accurate schedule. This schedule contains all of the steps required to do the thing along with accurate estimates of time and cost.

3. The third time you do the thing, you are able to do it to schedule and to budget.

[nitely]

I can see how this would work for software boutiques doing fairly similar projects each time, or projects with very similar parts, but not in complex products. Much less for software that does not use any kind of framework or follows any kind of recipe. Sometimes it's just step 1 in a loop.