Often clients can&#x27;t produce specs sufficient to build a house&#x2F;building&#x2F;pipeline.  That&#x27;s why there is an entire category of firms that exist that are hired by clients to produce these documents.<p>Guy wants an apartment building, he hires an AE firm and tells them &quot;I want an apartment building&quot; and they say &quot;well what kind of apartment building?&quot; and then goes through the exact same process of defining scope, budget, and schedule that would be done in any other project management field.  Lawyers get hired when someone wants to sue someone - &quot;well what do you want to sue them for?&quot;  Sourcing managers get hired when someone wants to make something - &quot;well what do we need to buy?&quot;<p>The fact that the software engineering industry refuses to acknowledge that their industry is not special is a constant source of confusion for anybody who has been doing this in another industry.  Why is the software industry special?  What makes software so nebulous that scopes cannot be defined and estimates made?  The argument that &quot;people don&#x27;t understand the impact of requests&quot; does not hold water - people don&#x27;t understand that simply wanting more room in a particular part of their house can cause an entire redesign.  That&#x27;s why you, as the expert, have to explain the impact of their requests clearly rather than just agree to them.<p>The problem with estimates and scheduling in software engineering isn&#x27;t a result of work, it is a result of failure by the project management.