How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between

by Bent Flyvbjerg

Caro introduced himself, and they talked. Inevitably, Caro was asked the question he had learned to dread: “How long have you been working on your book?” Reluctantly, he answered, “Five years.” But the other authors weren’t shocked; far from it. “Oh, that’s not so long,” one said. “I’ve been working on my Washington for nine years.” The other said that his book about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt had taken seven years. Caro was ecstatic. “In a couple of sentences, these two men—idols of mine—had wiped away five years of doubt.”[5] Caro’s work was not to blame; his forecast was. So how had Caro convinced himself that a book that would take seven years to write could certainly be done in one? As an investigative reporter, he had been used to taking a week or two to research and write an article, a generous amount of time by newsroom standards. He might spend three weeks writing a particularly long article or series of articles, the word count of which would be roughly equivalent to that of a book chapter. A book may have twelve chapters. So the estimate was easy: 12 × 3 = 36 weeks, or nine months. It was not clear at the start how many chapters the book would have, but even if it went as high as seventeen, the book could still be finished in less than a year. For a newspaper reporter, a year is an almost incomprehensibly long period of time to devote to one piece of writing. It’s small wonder then that Caro was confident.