Exclusion lists in a scope statement

Note from the editor: The following comment is from member Art Straub.

"The referenced article is excellent and includes material that I have been preaching for years. But there is one point that must be stressed--the importance of bringing the project constraints to the attention of the customer or stakeholder. I have spent hours constructing documents ranging from proposals to external designs with carefully boxed scope statements only to run into a crisis well into the project when the customer says "You didn't expect me to read all that, did you?" or "We only looked at the cost and the delivery date." (Genuine quotes) While my back is covered, the customer relationship is damaged, sometimes beyond repair.

Theoretically the sales rep is responsible for this. In practice, I have establised the procedure of reviewing such details, or at least pointing them out in the document, when I take over the curstomer contact at the project kickoff.

Thanks for the article and the opportunity to respond."

Yes this makes perfece sence. One of our last major projects did not have such a document. The manager we were working with did a horrible job in reviewing the scope. His director had visions of various charts and graphs and Business intellegance being part of the project, that was never in the scope. One should mention the Exclusing list in the executive summary that gets passed up the chain of command as well.