Accurate effort estimates are contingent on eliminating all sources of surprise, and software development is particularly, if not uniquely full of surprises.

2025-07-09T13:39:32Z

Accurate effort estimates are contingent on eliminating all sources of surprise, and software development is particularly, if not uniquely full of surprises.

People do succeed at beating deadlines derived from their effort estimates, so how do they pull it off?

Process Model Issues

What kinds of surprises are endemic to the software development process?

Why is software development so difficult to estimate?