"When I had my bathroom remodelled, at first I thought it was organized amazingly well and why couldn’t software be like that? There was a designer from Expo, a primary contractor and subcontractors for tiling, painting, etc. a project workbook containing all the documents, including the design, and a logbook for every contractor to record their visit. But it turned out to be just like a software project.
As soon as they started ripping up the walls, the painstakingly drawn design for the tub/shower was hastily and arbitrarily adjusted because the casing for an outside fire extinguisher was in the way. Many of the components turned out to be incompatible with each other and many were not the ones originally ordered (the bathtub was not even the one labelled on its box!)
Communication was terrible – the city inspector would tell the primary contractor to change something, and then a subcontractor would show up and ask me what he was supposed to do. When there was a disagreement about whether the tiling was done properly, one of the contractors disfigured the tiling to force another contractor to redo it. They all had other projects, so for long stretches I had a pile of dirt (for the cement) in my patio and a non-functioning bathroom for months. And toward the end there were some quick patches, e.g. the walls were slightly curved so edges of the tiles looked bad and they just painted the patches, which worked but cost me extra. And a couple of years later when the tub sprung a leak, the plumber couldn’t figure out how to get in there, said they must have done a shoddy job on connecting the pipes, then when he finally got a good look at it, realized why they did it that way. It was exactly like a software project!"