problems, estimation and unexpected ones.  unexpected problems can set
back even well-planned


During the course of this project, I was reminded just how difficult
it is to predict the types of problems that will hurt your progress.
In the past I have worked on many projects where it is very important
to try and predict what problems you will run into, and to correctly
estimate the time required to solve each problem.  If ypur prediction
was off by a substantial percentage, if could cause major problems
between my company and the client in question.

On this project we ran into several problems that could have
potentially been avoided with some extra planning in the beginning.
It is good to try and figure out what problems you could run into when
starting any substantial project, however, you must be careful not to
spend too much time planning in the beginning.  While some planning at
the beginning of a project can forsee some pitfalls that will save you
time later, too much planning will only waste time that could have
more effectivly have been spent working on the actual project.  

In our case, I believe that we spent about as much time in the
planning stages as we could have without becoming counter-productive.
There were several problems that we ran into that could have been
solved by more, or more productive planning, but had we spent the
amount of time planning that I believe would have been required to
learn these lessons, we would not have had enough time to finish the
project even with our new-found knowledge.  

Even those groups that most carefully plan their project can run into
unexpected problems that will set back your schedule.  How you deal
with these problems and attempt to remedy them is an important part in
how your group works together, which will significantly affect the
final quality of your project or product as well as your ability to
complete at all.