Andy,

I agree... software isn't nutoriously late and over budget due to lack of programming skills and effort, but due to estimating in a vacume.

If you are going to guess, make sure you pad it. Make sure you include 'politic' time, 'meeting' time, admin time, testing time, documentation time, beta time, etc...

And for goodness sake, CREATING well defined requierments and functional specs aren't a WASTE of time, they are a necessity and a MAJOR time saver.

BOb