One of the problems I experienced on a recent project was that there was not a common reference point. The designs were not locked down and there was little consistency. The backend was in flux and not functional at all.
In short there was nothing that could be shown to the stakeholders.
Not a great situation to be in.
But we could have taken a different path.
Building out a scaffolding, solid front-end code, and a styleguide would have allowed everyone involved to see incremental progress on the project.
Design can see how their work is going through responsive translation.
Development can see the HTML and patterns being created.
Most importantly the project stakeholders could have had a clickable version. This would allow them to better understand what the final site might look like.
In this revised situation everyone wins.
Design Systems Engineering can solve this problem by providing a systemized set of processes and documents that keeps everyone on the same page.