As a technology project manager, I have often been asked to give an estimate of the cost and time required to implement something.  There is much that has been written about how to do such estimates.  Some of it is good.  None of it is complete in my opinion, however there is a large body of generally accepted practices for arriving at an estimate. 

When the project requires making a change to an organization the quality of the estimating guidelines significantly declines.  We quickly get into issues of how willing are the members of the organization to change? What is the quality of the change? How can we know that the change will work?

When the change involves competition with other organizations, how can we take into account the changing nature of the competition? Can we take it into account? War is the most extreme form of competition.  Many have pointed out that the first thing the commander will discard in battle is the plan.  Things never go according to plan.  No doubt this point has been frequently exaggerated, and yet it does point to another aspect of quantifying how much effort will be required to make a given change.

Although, I do not expect a theory of society to give precise deterministic answers to the question, I do expect some improved estimating capability.

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