Might I humbly suggest that anybody serious about this issue read (sadly, the late) Manny Lehman's "FEAST" publications? He attempts to quantitatively model so

Might I humbly suggest that anybody serious about this issue read (sadly, the late) Manny Lehman's "FEAST" publications? He attempts to quantitatively model software evolution, which includes complexity, errors of omission (limitations of domain model), errors of commission ("bugs"), etc. It is fascinating reading. I remember many "Aha!" moments when seeing the graphs. It also contains many quantitatively-derived principles one can operate by, some of which underlie pg's "beating the averages" argument. His wikipedia page is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Lehman_%28computer_scientist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Lehman_%28computer_scien..., and the FEAST pubs are here http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/mml/feast2/papers.html http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/mml/feast2/papers.html