And here’s my current hot button … it appears that an awful lot of people in IT still don’t understand what “scope” is. They still think that scope must be fully defined at the start of the project rather than being discovered as you move through the phases of the life-cycle (or the iterations if you are going agile).

Why is scope relevant? Because the guideline for upfront-planning is “do more if you know the scope; do less if you don’t.” Since so many PMs are confused about what scope is, they can’t apply this basic guideline.

Duncan