I think one of the biggest is that there’s a misalignment of vision. For example, you might have worked on a team where your customer or the people outside of the team had an idea of what your team was going to produce. They might have thought, we hope for an awesome product delivered in nine months. Okay, I like the “nine months”, I don’t like the “hope”, and I don’t like the “awesome”.

How do you define awesome? What is an awesome product? As a team member you know that you want more than awesome, you want specifications. Regarding hope, I’m not saying that the managers or leaders can’t be hopeful, but that should not be part of the statement of work.

On the one side, you have your managers or your customers who are hoping for something that isn’t very well defined. On the other side, your vision will become much more clarified within the team. Before the team starts doing stuff they have to figure out what they’re working towards. What are the specifications of an awesome product? The problem with this is that even though you’ve defined what the awesome product is it might be completely misaligned with what your customers think an awesome product is. Aligning your vision is a critical part of team success.

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