The planning fallacy: why projects usually take longer than the estimate
Unknown unknowns: why many small risks make a project delay likely
Ten small steps, each with only a small chance of going wrong: a project plan like that looks safe. Do the sum, and a delay is more likely than not. And the worst surprises are on no list at all.
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You look at each step of the delivery app on its own. Could this one go wrong? Hardly, you think: maybe one chance in ten. So no step gets extra time.
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But the plan holds only if all ten steps go right. With nine chances in ten for each, that happens only about one time in three. A long chain of likely steps is an unlikely chain.
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