Norman Ralph Augustine Quotes
Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters.
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.
One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down.'
Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound ... Q.E.D.
One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected.
Law Number V: One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output.
For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction.
It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished.
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.
If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity.
There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two.
Law Number XXXII: Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.
If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.
A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete or a new canvas to an artist.
Soloist are inspiring in Opera and perhaps even in small entreprenurial ventures, but there is no place for them in large corporations.
Law Number XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems.
All too many consultants, when asked, 'What is 2 and 2?' respond, 'What do you have in mind?'
We believe in the wisdom once expressed by the hockey star Wayne Gretzky, who explained his success by saying, 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'
By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more government workers than there are workers.
By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.
Law Number L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's, but four times as long as the official's who created it.
The most unsuccessful three years in the education of cost estimators appears to be fifth-grade arithmetic.
Law Number XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight.
The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed randomly.
Law Number XX: In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the administration requests, minus 4-percent tax.
Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is currently estimated.
Law Number XXIV: The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man.
Only by providing leading-edge human capital and knowledge capital can American continue to maintain a high standard of living, including providing national security for its citizens.
