zlacker

>>vimes6+(OP)
It seems strange to me that software engineers are so frequently singled out for schedule slippage, when the impression I get is that every novel engineering project suffers from the exact same problem. Projects to design and build new military and civilian hardware and infrastructure always involve budget and schedule overruns of months or years. Can anyone provide convincing empirical evidence that software projects are delayed more than hardware projects of equivalent budget and distinctiveness from previous solutions?

A negative comparison often seems to be made between software engineering and construction, but it seems to me that the latter is a unique subfield of engineering, where you have an unusually large number of projects with a roughly homogenous set of constraints and variables. This has allowed those constraints and variables to be studied, understood and mastered to produce a discipline that more closely resembles mass-production. And in those subfields of software that also involve more homogenous constraints, such as the production of standard commercial websites, you do see a more controlled and templated approach, using tools like Wordpress.

>>stupid+wg
To list just a few such slipping projects outside the software realm:

* Space Launch System

* Boston's Big Dig

* New Berlin-Brandenburg Airport

>>inglor+Mn
The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in Finland. It’s a new type of reactor and one of the only nuclear projects in the West.

Construction started in 2005 and the plant was supposed to be online in 2010. Eleven years later it’s still not operational.

Original budget was 3 billion euros. Current estimate is over 11 billion.

>>pavlov+nt
Wise moves on the part of the project proponent, had they presented their project with a 17 year construction and 11 billion euro budget it never would have been started.

Humans are optimistic. If we knew in the beginning how long something will actually take we never would start many things.

>>liketo+Ni1
This is the "hiding hand" principle at play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiding_hand_principle

I highly recommend anyone interested in "megaprojects" to listen to this EconTalk podcast episode with Bent Flyvbjerg:

https://www.econtalk.org/bent-flyvbjerg-on-megaprojects/

Very insightful conversation.