#19: Wasted time during the fuzzy front end. The “fuzzy front end” is the time before the project starts, the time normally spent in the approval and budgeting process. It’s not uncommon for a project to spend months or years in the fuzzy front end and then to come out of the gates with an aggressive schedule. It’s much easier and cheaper and less risky to save a few weeks or months in the fuzzy front end than it is to compress a development schedule by the same amount.