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This is exactly it, the optimism bias is usually more likely to come from the client, especially if there's politics involved. What makes it worse is that once

This is exactly it, the optimism bias is usually more likely to come from the client, especially if there's politics involved. What makes it worse is that once the project is underway there's a political tendency to increase the scope. Prime example is the Scottish Parliament building, first estimate was for £50m. By the time all of the politicians were done with it the project's scope was unrecognisable and it cost well over £500m.

notahacker 4y ago
And there's one of the biggest differences between public and private sector scope changes. When the private sector decides to massively revise what they're doing on a project most of the decisions take place behind closed doors and the guy with the most impact on the scope creep probably puts in on his CV as successfully scaling up operations. When the public sector project balloons it's people's tax dollars and there's an opposition party and lots of journalists pointing out the original budget.