What do you want to do? Project Scope

I cannot over state how important this step is.

Before we begin a project we need to now what we want to do. Not just a general idea but very precisely what we intend to do or accomplish. In Project Management we call this Scope. The more detail we have the better chance we have of ending up with a product we and more importantly the customer will be happy with. Let's use the construction of a house as an example. I can say my family needs a house but this is extremely vague. I can say my family wants a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. This is a little better. But what we really want is: I would like you to design and build a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house for my family. I would like it to be wood frame construction, in a bungalow style and the cost including land can not exceed $175,000. I would like it to have about 2000 square feet and a backyard large enough for a pool. Additionally it needs to be located in the 33155 zip code and I would like you to start construction within 30 days of my approval of the design and be completed in 120 days after the start. Please provide me a design within next two weeks, I will in turn return it to you within a week later with my changes if any. This is a good start but still in a real project I would want even much more detail, the more the better.....