Big projects for enterprise clients are where things get real.
More stakeholders. Bigger budgets. Higher stakes. And a lot more that can go wrong.
What makes them tricky isn’t just the size – it’s the complexity.
If you don’t have the right approach from day one, the whole thing can spiral out of control.
And while every project’s different, the fundamentals don’t change.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the 9 things we always do to keep large projects on track, from planning and estimation to QA, communication, and client collaboration.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
Start with a realistic plan and estimates
If the plan’s off, everything else will be too.
Some enterprise projects kick off with next to no time to prep. No designs, no real specs. Just pressure from above to ship something, fast.
Sound familiar?
It’s tempting to just say yes and figure it out later. But that’s what leads to missed deadlines, extra work, and frustrated teams.
Here’s what you should do instead.
First, accept the reality. If the timeline is fixed, work backwards from that. What’s truly possible in that time? What’s not?
Don’t just guess. Break it down. Look at your team’s actual capacity. Account for onboarding, unknowns you’ll need to research, and holidays.
Always add a buffer, 20% at minimum. Something will always go wrong – and you need to be prepared for it.
Mario Zderic, DECODE co-founder and CTO
Remember, development is only half the job. The rest is planning, testing, deployment, bug fixes, and managing change along the way.
Clients often don’t see this up front. That’s why you need to educate them early about what the full delivery process actually involves.
If both the scope and deadline are “non-negotiable”? That’s a red flag. Something has to give. Either the scope, the deadline, or the budget.
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And unless the deadline is far in the future, you can’t increase team size overnight. You’ll waste time hiring before you can even start doing anything.
Be honest with the client. If the scope doesn’t fit the timeline, say so. Show them the trade-offs, offer a phased plan, and prioritize the features that actually matter for version one.
Here’s what a realistic planning process should always include:
A breakdown of scope by sprint or delivery milestone
A list of open questions or assumptions you’ll validate during discovery
Risk areas with mitigation plans
Rough effort ranges for each major feature or integration
A shared timeline doc – not hidden in someone’s inbox
Also – don’t wait for perfectly written specs. You won’t get them.
Clients often come in with just a few vague lines describing entire modules. That’s normal. It’s your job to help define the work, not just build it.
Your estimates set the tone for the whole project. If they’re wrong, everything will feel rushed and chaotic. If they’re solid, you’ll have room to breathe.
One more thing – don’t skip discovery.
We know, you’re under pressure to deliver. But even a short discovery phase can save weeks of pain down the line.
It’s where you uncover unknowns, spot blockers, and get everyone on the same page before development starts.
The truth is, you’ll never get estimates 100% right.
But that’s not the point. The goal is to be close enough that your plan holds up when things get messy.
That’s how you keep the project on track and earn trust. And it’s how you actually deliver.
Define scope and requirements up front
You can’t deliver what no one can describe.
In large projects, unclear requirements are everywhere. Vague feature lists. Conflicting feedback. No one really agrees on what’s in or out.
That’s a problem.
Because when the scope isn’t clear, nothing else works. You can’t estimate. You can’t plan. And you definitely can’t ship on time.
So here’s what we do before any real development starts.
We define what’s being built. In plain language. Not just epics in Jira, actual written requirements compiled in a software requirements specification (SRS) document.
And when the client can’t give you that? You help them get there. That’s part of the job.
We sit down with stakeholders and ask these simple questions:
What does this feature do, exactly?
What happens if it fails?
How do we know when it’s done?
That’s how you cut through the noise. Assumptions kill projects – and enterprise teams have a lot of them.
You’ll often get just a few lines in a document to describe something complex. When that happens, treat it like a starting point, not a final answer.
Your job is to turn vague notes into something buildable. That’s where real value comes in.
Once we have answers, we write everything down. And we keep it simple:
User stories with acceptance criteria
A list of key features, tagged by priority
Known constraints, dependencies, and blockers
Out-of-scope items (these matter just as much)
A shared doc everyone can actually find and read
This becomes our source of truth. It’s what we refer back to when things get messy – and they always do.
And if something’s still unclear? Call it out. Mark it as TBD. Add a flag. Push for a decision before it slows you down later.
It’s better to have a clear “we don’t know yet” than a fake sense of certainty.
And if you’re brought in late, don’t expect a perfect scope. You’ll probably have tohelp define it while you build. That’s fine, as long as everyone understands what’s happening.
One more thing: scope evolves. It should. But you still need a solid version 1 before you can handle version 2. Without that, you’ll never hit a stable release.
Define the work before you do the work.
That’s how you avoid endless change requests, constant rework, and missed deadlines.
And it’s what keeps large projects under control.
Align with stakeholders from day one
If you don’t get everyone on the same page early, you’ll be putting out fires later.
Enterprise projects come with a crowd. Product owners. Engineers. Legal. Security. Marketing. Everyone’s got opinions. And they rarely agree on the details.
That’s why alignment is critical, right from the start.
You need a clear picture of who’s involved, what they care about, and what role they actually play:
Who makes the final decisions?
Who can block progress?
Who just wants visibility?
If you don’t know, find out fast. If no one knows, you’ve already got a problem.
At the start of every project, we set up the basics:
A clear decision-maker (or at least a small group)
A shared communication channel
Weekly calls with a set agenda
Async updates so people don’t need constant meetings
A way to escalate blockers fast
But alignment isn’t about adding more meetings. It’s about making decisions faster and avoiding surprises later.
Not all stakeholders need to be involved all the time. In fact, they shouldn’t be.
The key is to avoiddesign by committee. Stakeholders don’t need to agree on everything, but they do need to trust the process and know how decisions are being made.
After the first release, you’ll often need to reset.
Maybe the original plan was rushed. Maybe priorities changed. That’s okay, but it means rebuilding clarity around the scope, the roadmap, and responsibilities.
Also, expect roles to evolve. As you move past version one, some stakeholders will be less involved. Others will get more involved. You need to be ready to adjust.
The worst thing you can do is assume everyone’s aligned. Because chances are, they’re not.
So make it a habit. Start early. And never let key decisions hang in the air.
That’s how you avoid confusion and stay on track, no matter how complex things get.
Integrate legacy systems into your architecture
Legacy systems are part of the deal when working with enterprise clients.
Old platforms. Outdated code. APIs that randomly fail for no reason.
You can’t avoid them, but you can work around them.
First, accept that you won’t fix the legacy system. That’s not your job.
Your job is to make sure it doesn’t break everything else. And that means designing your architecture to contain the damage.
Here’s what you can do:
Build wrappers or interface layers to isolate legacy APIs
Add retries, timeouts, and proper error handling
Log everything, especially edge cases
Assume failure and plan for recovery
Sometimes, you’ll find gaps in the system no one warned you about, undocumented behavior, and “surprise” dependencies.
When that happens, don’t panic. Flag it, loop in the right people, and document what you’ve learned and adjust.
And be honest with the client.
Legacy systems will slow things down. They’ll limit what’s possible. Make that clear early so no one’s caught off guard later.
Unless you were hired to do just that, you won’t have the opportunity to modernize their whole stack. But you can keep things stable, clean, and maintainable on your end.
And that’s what matters.
Don’t let the legacy system drag your whole project down – isolate it, design around it, and keep things moving.
Communicate trade-offs and set realistic expectations
You can’t (and shouldn’t!) say yes to everything.
In big projects, the asks don’t stop. New features, use cases, and “quick changes” that aren’t quick at all.
The bigger the project, the easier it is for scope creep to take over.
If you try to squeeze everything in, something’s going to break – quality, speed, or your team.
That’s why managing expectations is a core part of successful project management.
Start by being honest. Not when it’s too late. Right away.
If a feature will take three weeks, say that. If a new idea puts the deadline at risk, show what happens if priorities shift. Don’t pad timelines or promise something you can’t deliver.
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Beespecially clear about work that’s not visible to the client.
Integrations, technical spikes, cleanup tasks – this is where things get misunderstood. They take time, and that time matters. Your job is to make that visible.
When priorities shift – and they always do – show the impact clearly.
For every “yes,” explain what gets delayed. For every “urgent fix,” explain what gets dropped. Not to scare anyone, but to stop the project from spiraling out of control.
It helps to keep it visual:
Use a shared roadmap
Flag dependencies
Tie features to business value
Show effort in sprints or dev weeks
The key is to frame every decision as a trade-off – because that’s exactly what it is.
Fast vs. thorough. Now vs. later. Quick fix vs. long-term stability.
Your client might not love hearing it. But they’ll respect it and trust you more for being straight with them.
And when something’s truly unrealistic?
Say no. Do it respectfully, and explain why it won’t work. Be direct, not defensive.
You’re not just here to say yes. You’re here to guide the project to success, and that sometimes means pushing back.
That only works if the expectations are realistic from the start and if you hold the line when it counts.
Reduce meeting overload
Too many meetings will kill your momentum.
And in large enterprise projects, meetings are a dime a dozen. Daily check-ins. Weekly standups. Syncs with product. Syncs with tech. Syncs about syncs.
Before you know it, no one has time to actually build.
Your team needs structure, sure – but you also need space to work.
Here’s what we do to protect deep focus:
Limit recurring meetings to what’s essential
Keep low-priority updates out of meetings
Use shared docs to cut status calls
Block off no-meeting hours for the team
Only bring in people who actually need to be there
The goal isn’t fewer meetings just for the sake of it. The goal is better meetings and more time to do the real work.
We’ve seen productivity jump just by cutting two unnecessary calls a week.
Clients feel it too. When your team’s focused, quality goes up, bugs go down, and delivery speeds up.
If the schedule is chaotic, step in and help simplify it. Suggest fewer, better-timed meetings, share async updates in writing, and make sure every call has a clear agenda.
You don’t need to sit in Google Meet all day to stay on the same page.
Focus on fewer, more meaningful check-ins and spend the rest of the time building.
Build scalable QA processes
At scale, QA can’t be an afterthought.
In large projects, small bugs can become big problems. One broken flow can impact thousands of users or worse, break production.
You need a QA setup that can handle this.
Start by getting QA involved early. Don’t wait until “the end” to test. That’s when the pressure is highest and the time is gone.
Instead, bake testing into every stage:
Test cases written alongside user stories
Devs writing unit and integration tests as they build
QA running functional checks before anything hits staging
Automated regression suites for every release
Manual testing where it still adds value
Catching bugs early means they’re much cheaper to fix than post-deployment.
In fact, finding and fixing a bug right at the very start of development, when writing requirements, can be up to 100x cheaper:
Also, give your QA team time and space to explore.
Let them poke around, ask questions, and follow hunches.
Don’t skip exploratory testing. It’s how your QAs find the weird stuff – the edge cases and the “what happens if I click this three times and switch tabs mid-request” kind of bugs.
Ines Avmedoski, Technical Project Manager at DECODE
We’ve caught major issues this way – bugs that passed automation but broke real workflows. Especially in projects with heavy business logic or legacy integrations.
Doing this will prevent a lot of headaches down the line.
Scalable QA isn’t about perfection. It’s about catching the big stuff early and fixing it fast.
That’s what keeps things stable and gives clients confidence.
Build trust through transparency
Code matters. But trust is what holds big projects together.
Trust is what keeps the team together. It’s what keeps the client calm when things go wrong. And it’s what gives you space to fix problems without panic.
You don’t build trust with perfectly polished status updates. You build it by being honest, especially when things go wrong.
If a feature’s late, say it. If something broke in production, show what happened.If a blocker comes out of nowhere, flag it immediately and not “once we’ve solved it.”
Here’s what we do:
Share updates regularly, even when progress is slow.
Call out risks early, before they blow up.
Document decisions so no one’s caught off guard.
Take responsibility as a team with no finger-pointing.
Show how you’re solving problems, not just reporting them.
Most clients don’t expect perfection. But they do expect clarity. And they remember how you handle the rough patches.
If someone on their side is causing delays, be transparent. Don’t throw them under the bus, but don’t silently take the hit either. State the facts clearly and professionally.
Tone matters, as does timing. A fast, honest update builds more trust than a delayed one wrapped in spin.
And when things are going well? Don’t just say, “Feature X is done.”
Show it. Walk them through what changed. Demo the work. Make the value clear.
Trust isn’t built through promises. It’s built through consistency.
And consistency comes from transparency at every step of the way.
Keep documentation clear and up to date
You can’t scale a project if all the knowledge lives in someone’s head.
On big enterprise projects, people rotate. Teams change. Priorities shift. And if your docs are out of date, you’re flying blind when things break.
Worse, they give you false confidence. Everyone assumes something’s handled…until it isn’t.
Good documentation isn’t busywork. It’s how you keep momentum when things get messy and how you avoid relearning the same lessons twice.
We keep it simple and start with the essentials:
Architecture diagrams
API contracts
Integration guides
Setup instructions
Known limitations and decisions
Then, we put them in one place.
Somewhere people actually use – Notion, Confluence, it doesn’t really matter. Just don’t bury them in random folders or 50-message Slack threads.
Also, make sure to assign ownership. Someone needs to keep things updated – if it’s everyone’s job, no one does it.
And don’t aim for perfection. Focus on clarity. A rough diagram is better than none and a bullet list of caveats is better than a “TODO.”
Include context, not just the what – the why behind decisions matters too. Especially if you’re moving fast and making trade-offs.
Real examples go a long way. If a module is tricky to test or set up, show how it was done last time.
Because when a new dev joins mid-development or you’re firefighting an integration issue, the last thing you want is to spend 3 days piecing together missing info from old tickets and Slack history.
So write things down and update as you go.
It’ll save time, prevent repeat bugs, and keep the team focused on building and not guessing.
And yes, your client will notice the difference.
How to manage large-scale projects: FAQs
Before touching any code, we step back and look at the big picture – the scope, timelines, blockers, and team structure.
Who’s involved? What’s already been decided? What’s broken?
If the project’s already in motion, we don’t rush into it. We focus on stabilizing first.
That might mean solving key bottlenecks, isolating risky integrations, or just getting the current release over the line.
Only once we’ve got things under control do we look at longer-term improvements like better estimates, proper planning, and building trust with stakeholders.
We don’t shut it down with a hard no. But we don’t blindly say yes, either.
We walk them through the impact: what slips, what breaks, what gets dropped.
That conversation starts with data: effort estimates, dev capacity, dependencies. Then we shift into solutions like phased delivery, deferring low-priority features, or moving non-critical work out of the sprint.
Every change has a cost, and our job is to make that cost visible.
It’s not about protecting the plan- it’s about protecting the delivery.
We bring it up as soon as we can.
We don’t play the blame game, but we don’t stay quiet either. If delays or quality issues are coming from outside our team, we make it visible to the client fast.
Then we offer practical solutions. That might mean adjusting the timeline, isolating that integration behind a clean interface, or even taking over part of the work.
Sometimes the client’s team just isn’t resourced properly. In that case, we can help them make the case internally.
Silence is the worst option. If something’s blocking us, it has to be handled as soon as possible.
Want to learn more?
Managing large-scale software projects isn’t easy – but it doesn’t have to feel chaotic.
If you’re working with an enterprise client and need a software development partner who can handle the complexity, we should talk.
Mario makes every project run smoothly. A firm believer that people are DECODE’s most vital resource, he naturally grew into his former role as People Operations Manager. Now, his encyclopaedic knowledge of every DECODEr’s role, and his expertise in all things tech, enables him to guide DECODE's technical vision as CTO to make sure we're always ahead of the curve.
Part engineer, and seemingly part therapist, Mario is always calm under pressure, which helps to maintain the office’s stress-free vibe. In fact, sitting and thinking is his main hobby. What’s more Zen than that?
