I previously wrote a post stating that Software is a Wicked Problem, and indeed it is.

There is a bigger Wicked Problem that affects software projects though, that of Politics and Management. 

While there are at least technical solutions to most software problems, and even wicked problems can be cracked eventually, it is a much harder and more time consuming issue to deal with political and managerial problems, and they largely turn out to be wicked problems in of themselves.

And, as with all wicked problems, it is faster to fix the problem than it is to estimate how long it will take to fix - it also happens that with politics and managerial issues, it is often nearly impossible to estimate, or to actually fix the problems, so software developers spend most of their time trying to work around these problems rather than addressing them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

http://www.poppendieck.com/wicked.htm