anther log for the fire - sometimes the estimate isn't so off by itself(although it often is)

somehow we fail to account for the other things. background bug fixing activity, writing unrelated future work out on the whiteboard, reworking an adjacent component. not being on your game, expecting something to already work when it clearly doesn't

so yeah, those are developer failures. but at least as often, i think technical management has failed by laying out a plan with a fixed end date. for all the reasons above and more, the end date passes by, and another date is laid out, and so on.

i think we all need to do a better job of adapting to circumstance and continuously measuring the progress vs the passage of time. where we can settle for less than what we planned, and how to express the truth of the matter. the worst trap we all fall into is thinking that perhaps we aren't as far along as we should be, but a couple days of solid effort will put us back on track.

'just two more weeks' is the death knell of many projects