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> In our meetings, several people who attended bring up "1% of the time"
possibilities, and want the site to address them. As a result, every meeting
we've had brings us further from our original goal, and closer to total
chaos.
This happens all the time. Lately, I've been recommending to clients that we
meet the 80-20 rule with the first design concept. We then discuss, develop
and implement the extra 50% of the work that gets another 10% of the
population. For the remaining 10% that includes all those 100s of "1% of the
time exceptions" (yes I realize that the math does not add up), we make a
universal equivalent of "Call the schmoo who will handle your pet peeve
problem by hand." It turns out that in most situations handling each of the
"rare exceptions" by hand outside of the software and documentation is more
cost effective than trying to design a universal solution into the original
program.
