How Close is Software Development to Real Life situations

Recently, while on vacation at my parent's place , I came across a situation which left me wondering how close software dev. is to real life situations.

It goes like this. The place where my parents stay is a newly developed area and we dont have a tar road in front of our house.Infact bang opposite our gate there was a small depression and in rainy season , water used to get accumlated there. My father decided to get that pothole filled up and he got hold of a labourer asked him to put some gravel for an amount of 500 bucks.
After some time we noticed that around 7-8 labourers are working and trying to patch up the area , infact they were trying to patch up the entire stretch in front of our house.
When questioned , one fellow( not the one we had asked to do the work) came forward and said that we should talk to him as the labourers worked for him. Inspite of our telling him , the workmen continued the work. When we threatened that we are not going to pay ,they stopped.
When it came to payment they started demanding 2000/- stating that they had got the gravel etc. Hearing the commotion , our neighbour also jumped in saying that the gravel has been picked from his plot and we should not pay the labourers anything for the material as they had not paid him. Finally everything was setlled for 1000/- bucks.

When I analyed the situation, I noticed striking similarities with s/w development.
We needed a solution for our problem( the pot hole). The labourer we contracted ( software developer). He not being sure of the scope got his colleagues to chip in.
The fellow who insisted that these people work for him ( The Manager) and they were charging us for their work as well as material which was in fact a freeware
(the gravel picked from neighbour's plot ) and we finally ended up paying more than what we had budgeted(customer) and those guys got less than what they had planned.