Large amounts of time were taken up with the initial approval process and the sign-offs upon completion.

If you’re developing software, as I was, then the actual creation of the software becomes a consideration. The time required depends strongly on two things: quality of software engineers and quality of management. Never skimp on these. Better engineers cost more, but an excellent engineer can be ten times as productive as an average one, have fewer post-release bugs, and a more maintainable product.

Management is often overlooked as a factor here. Managers must have the respect of their somewhat difficult software engineers. Software projects just have too many ways to go awry. Decent rapport between software developers and software managers will make a huge difference in the creation time and quality of the final product.

Even if you have all of these pieces in place, you still must make crucial decisions, often early in the project, about trade-offs. Then, you have to keep to them. More features, better performance, and a cleaner user interface often require much more development time. The size (number of code lines) also is an important factor, especially for post-release activities.

I’ve yet to see a software project where the initial specification was not changed during the project. You must have an early review system to catch problems as early as possible so that adjustments have the least impact on schedules.

And people wonder why software projects always tend to be late. I bid and performed many projects during my 15 years of independent contracting and completed every one on time. It can be done.