[tapland]

Yes. You have agreements about what is fair game and what is off limits. It can be that nothing can be physically altered, what times of day or office locations are OK, if it should only be a test against web services or anything in between.

[SkyBelow]

Do you? You have agreement with part of the company and work it out with them, but does this routinely include the people who would be actively looking for your intrusion and trying to catch it? Often that is handled by automated systems which are not updated to have any special knowledge about the up coming penetration test and most of those supporting the application aren't made aware of the details either. The organization is aware, but not all of the people who may be impacted.

[tapland]

Exactly. That's answered higher up in the comment tree you are responding to.