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In an organization structured like this, the senior managers and the stakeholders often
end up frustrated with the development team. No matter how much pressure they are
under, the engineers seem to be going at a slow pace. The engineers, on the other hand,
feel like they are already putting in overtime to meet the needs of the other people in the
organization, who never seem to be satisfied.

The vision and scope document helps fix this problem by helping the engineers under-
stand the project priorities. It identifies deadlines that are external to the project and that
must be treated as constraints. The team can make sure that those deadlines are addressed
directly when they are planning their tasks. They can warn senior management early in
the project if the deadlines are in danger of not being met, and the stakeholders can be
told when their needs are not being met. The stakeholders, in return, will feel like the
engineers are taking their needs seriously. All of this can be brought about by a frank dis-
cussion of those needs while the vision and scope is developed.

The project plan also fixes this because it represents an agreement between the engineer-
ing team, the stakeholders, the users, and the organization’s senior management. Because
it is based on the engineers’ estimates, they know that they are given enough time. The
stakeholders, in turn, are given a window into the planning and estimation process, which
establishes a level of trust between them and the engineers.

32 CHAPTER TWO