Chapter 6. Elaboration: We Create the Framework

At this point we knew what we wanted to build. More importantly, we knew what Russell wanted us to build. These were not always identical. Sometimes we let our personal vision cloud our view of what we needed to build to satisfy our customer. In many projects, reality hits home during the Elaboration phase. All of the care and good work that go into writing the Vision and initial requirements cannot guarantee that you will deliver the product within the time and budget allotted.

There are several reasons for this inconsistency. The main problem is that while you are crafting the Vision and eliciting the initial requirements, you are also capturing everything the customer, and other stakeholders, want in the product. In fact, when you prioritize what the product needs to be successful, you create a smaller set of requirements than you started with ”sometimes much smaller.

Another problem can be that your team members may not be good at estimating how much they can deliver in the time they have. Even when the team isn't working under a deadline, members often underestimate the effort required to develop product-quality software. (Of course, one reason to build PSP Tools in the first place was to address this very issue.)

We mention the problem of matching reality with expectations at the beginning of the chapter on the Elaboration phase because:

• You often encounter the mismatch during the Elaboration phase.

• It happened to our team.