Hal Macomber has an interesting thought about Understanding Project Constraints. Is it more than just people, time and money?
Might increasing shared understanding lead to increased project throughput?
Macomber has written about time and physical constraints as well as policy and paradigm constraints. But this idea of "shared understanding" is an interesting addition. On first blush it seems it might be a planning issue (requirements gathering). But if there is little common ground for the team (with the client, with themselves, with the larger business), then the project is simply going to run longer as those things sort themselves out over the course of the project.