&gt; My point though is this doesn&#x27;t fit &quot;we didn&#x27;t start early enough&quot; IMO. They knew how much time they had. No one was&#x2F;is dicating too much work. They can cut the scope at any time. But they rarely do.<p>Doesn&#x27;t knowing how much time you have, and then not cutting scope when you see your plans don&#x27;t fit into that time, count as not starting early enough?<p>I also came from games, and I agree that scope is rarely cut, and often self-inflicted. I was also under Mr. Very Large Publisher, and it was more complicated than that- we had control over scope, but not over schedule. We had control over how much work to do and the quality, but not the budget.<p>The major problem in my experience was that the team was excited, motivated and willing to work hard, so optimistic about their ability to do great things inside the limited budget and schedule. Therefore, they tried to do too much. All other things being equal, more time would have helped, every single time. Which can be summarized as &quot;we didn&#x27;t start early enough.&quot; That doesn&#x27;t mean that actually starting earlier would have solved the problem. Actually starting earlier might have led to even larger plans. So, IMO &quot;we didn&#x27;t start early enough.&quot; is not meant to be taken literally, it&#x27;s a way of understanding the problem, not a way to solve the problem.