Graham's Law

Graham's Law

Being creative is truly difficult. Creating anything for the first time is fraught with risk and always takes way more time than you can first appreciate.

It is good to repeat this message to stakeholders: “The effort involved in creating anything for the first time is massive when compared to the effort to support that same thing”.

Graham’s Law has been around for some time with me. It is intended as a ‘rule of thumb’ rather than a ‘hard and fast rule’, and can be used as an opening discussion with stakeholders about the effort and time involved when the architecture is first being formed.
The chart shows that the 2nd time you do something, it is way faster. This is a good reason for ensuring that you have specific experience within the team.
The chart also shows that the support team can easily support a larger number of solutions than the projects that create them.

What is your experience?