software proverbs and mistakes

1. Actually succeeding software project depends on a whole lot less on not doing a few things wrong but on doing almost almost everything right.
2. The first 90% of task takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% percent takes the other 90% percent.
I was going thru McConnel's Rapid development approach and outlined 36 mistakes.

People Mistakes
Undermined motivation
Weak personnel
Uncontrolled problem employees
Heroics
Adding people to a late project
Noisy, crowded offices
Friction between developers and customers
Unrealistic expectations
Lack of effective project sponsorship
Lack of stakeholder buy-in
Lack of user input
Politics placed over substance
Wishful thinking

Process Mistakes
Overly optimistic schedules
Insufficient risk management
Contractor failure
Insufficient planning
Abandonment of planning under pressure
Wasted time during the fuzzy front end
Shortchanged upstream activities
Inadequate design
Shortchanged quality assurance
Insufficient management controls
Premature or too frequent convergence
Omitting necessary tasks from estimates
Planning to catch up later
Code-like-hell programming


Product Mistakes
Requirements gold-plating
Feature creep
Developer gold-plating
Push me, pull me negotiation
Research-oriented development


Technology Mistakes
Silver-bullet syndrome
Overestimated savings from new tools or methods
Switching tools in the middle of a project
Lack of automated source control