[duwease]

I was hoping for an analogy to explain how difficult it is to estimate long-term programming work due to unexpected "black swan" details popping up as you get into the work that add considerable effort to the project. It's a situation I find I need to explain often, and in layman terms, so a perfect analogy would be great...

[antubbs]

I think that's been beaten to death with http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software...