If I have a schedule for the delivery phases, do I have a real scope of work on my hands? No, I do not.

If a schedule of major milestone deliverables gets confused for a project scope, I will get sucked into a major time-sink of wasted meetings and emails. Everyone will be fighting for clarification or justification of what exactly is being built while work is already under way. If the original project planning is broad enough to have planned for a high-level scope with a very high-level schedule (rolling-wave or agile style planning), then it can still be controlled. But a very detailed project schedule with detailed milestones without a corresponding detailed scope is a recipe for an unhappy outcome.

I draw up the scope first THEN I detail the schedule. If it's handed to me the other way, then I have to reverse engineer before delivery gets out of hand.

If I don't do the scope how do I know whether we've included the right tasks within the right phases, eh?!