&gt; <i>&quot;All projects that finish late have this one thing in common: they started late&quot;</i><p>McConnell has a really good discussion of this in <i>Rapid Development</i>, calling it &quot;The Fuzzy Front-end&quot; of a project.<p>&quot;Everyone knows&quot; that certain projects &quot;have&quot; to be undertaken, but they will often just be talked about and talked about and talked about until it&#x27;s too late to do anything but talk about not talking about things in future.