I agree. There is also a lot you can do to decrease impact of novelty on the overall schedule and most people I work with do exactly nothing to reduce variabil

I agree. There is also a lot you can do to decrease impact of novelty on the overall schedule and most people I work with do exactly nothing to reduce variability in the process and improve their estimation ability. It is easy to claim every time you write code you are doing something new but, hey, every time they build a building they do something new. Yet buildings (except for extremely ambitious projects) typically can be delivered reliably by reputable developers.