the map becomes the territory here. if you have enough information to accurately estimate a project then you've already done the bulk of the work, and all you h

the map becomes the territory here. if you have enough information to accurately estimate a project then you've already done the bulk of the work, and all you have left to do is type. The reason estimates are hard is because the work surprises you. You find out there are problems you didn't expect that must be solved to meet the stated goals. This happens all the time, it always happens on anything non trivial, which is why you have to add time to estimates beyond your initial assumptions. What experience teaches you is that this is going to happen, and it even gives you an inkling of the sorts of ways it might happen, and even better it makes it easier for you to resolve these issues when they do happen because they tend to be similar to other problems you've encountered before, but what it can't tell you is which problems you'll run into, becuase you won't run into them, until you do.