80/20 rule¶

You see the 80/20 rule cropping up regularly. Here's another one. Especially look at the last three, four paragraphs.

Are you spotting a pattern here? Like those other winners, the Internet, and the Web that rides on it, hit big 80/20 points and avoided the deadly disease of completism. And they all had something else in common: you could put them to work fast, before the landscape changed in progress.

Don't try to reach completeness. Don't try to cover 100%. I'll always remember a certain xml-dev post, mostly because of point 1: It is unlikely that a spec will be successful unless specialists in the field complain that it is far too simple for real-world use.