Interesting thought experiment, if you are good at something, why do you sometimes screw up? Sometimes it is because of pressure, sometimes it is because you weren't as careful as you should have been because it is all old hat. Sometimes you just don't really care. Well, a recent study has found something similar with Software companies and organizational structures within them.
Often times when working in industry, projects will very often change scope beyond what we initially think that they will be. My professor always says that no one is good at projecting how much work is actually required or how long something will take, at best, you can get a rough estimate. This is telling because so often it will be true and be a major cause of stress on a given project as management can be keen to forget what is going on behind the scenes and how much can is being put in.
The study, which can be found here, is quite good and shows the kind of nuances that can often be overlooked when it comes to how much work actually goes into software development. This can only get worse when you apply it over to FOSS just due to the nature of contributing to a project and how there isn't really a way to guarantee anything of the people that you are working with.
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