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"Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver." ^ This. This. This. I can't say this enough

"Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver." ^ This. This. This. I can't say this enough. I understand business is business, but that side of a company needs to be more flexible for development. Hard deadlines only lead to cutting corners and poor, quick design decisions that make everything there after much worse.

mindcrime 11y ago
Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver. I used to think this way. But the longer I've been doing this, the more I realize that some (but definitely not all) hard deadlines exist for good reasons. There are external realities that a business has to deal with, like tax laws and accounting guidelines, that change, and go into effect on set dates. And there are times when you have a very specific reason for wanting at least a demo of $NEW_FEATURE before, say, a major marketing event like a trade-show or conference. These things aren't arbitrary and made up just to piss off the developers, even when it seems that way. However... and here's the part that nearly everybody seems to miss: If you're using a good agile based process (say, Scrum, done well) "hard deadlines" are a little bit less of an issue, exactly because you're always working on "the most important thing you could possibly be working on" at any given time, and at the end of a given iteration (when you do ship functioning code), you at least have "the most complete possible version" available, even if it's not 100% complete. This is why prioritizing requirements is so crucial, but sadly, a lot of the business users who nominally should be doing the prioritizing, don't understand how this concept works.
- TheCoelacanth 11y ago
  Yes, bad things aren't always possible to avoid. That's just the nature of human existence. But you shouldn't go out of your way to create problems for yourself. Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on. Totally. I agree with that 100%.

mindcrime 11y ago

Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver. I used to think this way. But the longer I've been doing this, the more I realize that some (but definitely not all) hard deadlines exist for good reasons. There are external realities that a business has to deal with, like tax laws and accounting guidelines, that change, and go into effect on set dates. And there are times when you have a very specific reason for wanting at least a demo of $NEW_FEATURE before, say, a major marketing event like a trade-show or conference. These things aren't arbitrary and made up just to piss off the developers, even when it seems that way. However... and here's the part that nearly everybody seems to miss: If you're using a good agile based process (say, Scrum, done well) "hard deadlines" are a little bit less of an issue, exactly because you're always working on "the most important thing you could possibly be working on" at any given time, and at the end of a given iteration (when you do ship functioning code), you at least have "the most complete possible version" available, even if it's not 100% complete. This is why prioritizing requirements is so crucial, but sadly, a lot of the business users who nominally should be doing the prioritizing, don't understand how this concept works.

TheCoelacanth 11y ago
Yes, bad things aren't always possible to avoid. That's just the nature of human existence. But you shouldn't go out of your way to create problems for yourself. Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on. Totally. I agree with that 100%.