The difference between a consultant with lots of real world experience and not. Yes there is slippage, but you learn to plan for it. In the past week I had an

The difference between a consultant with lots of real world experience and not. Yes there is slippage, but you learn to plan for it. In the past week I had an employee have a baby and an employee have a parent pass away and another one have a horrible knee injury and be unable to work for a couple days, meanwhile we lost no time on a project by we are up some of our buffer. If you don't plan to meet your deadlines even when faced with feature and scope creep ( which managing is another discussion entirely ) or things 100% out of your control there is other people that can and so your not going to be picked for projects that require real time mission critical demands. And yea, if you figure that out, you get to charge more, and sleep less.