Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
This law captures the fundamental difficulty of software estimation. Even when we know we're bad at estimating, we're still bad at estimating.
- The discovered work emerges because...well, you "discovered" it
- Scope creep happens gradually
- Integration takes longer than expected
The solution isn't better estimation; it's shorter feedback loops.