Software engineering is a “wicked problem”
Cannot be easily defined so that all stakeholders agree on the problem to solve
Require complex judgments about the level of abstraction at which to define the problem
Have no clear stopping rules
Have better or worse solutions, not right and wrong ones
Have no objective measure of success
Require iteration — every trial counts
Have no given alternative solutions — these must be discovered
Often have strong moral, political or professional dimensions
S. Buckingham Shum http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/org-knowledge/aikm97/sbs-paper2.html