[san_at_weblegit]

The fact that there are so many reasons for the failure itself tell why the failures are so frequent. I strongly believe that it should be more than just the development teams which should be attributed for failures. Projects rarely get delayed or fail cause of developers only, the more responsible parties are management and the company culture. Even the strongest of the developers would learn over period of time that sticking to a more realistic schedule would not earn them praises. Unfortunately the path to promotion is to keep the bosses happy in most places. Most people do not have motivation about the end results, its more about looking good on day to day basis. Keeping the failures aside what has worked for me in the past is to add little padding (10%-20%) to all the tasks which no one would question and then we have enough padding to cover for any task in which the team really spent around 1000% percent more time than estimated. Again it really depends on how much the product people understand the efforts involved in development. Its hard to make some one believe that one line change took 3-4 days and another 1000 lines were added in half a day if they have not been there themselves.