I agree with Alex here, but the reality is that companies LOVE heroes. I see it happen over, and over again (and usually with the same people). The manager as

I agree with Alex here, but the reality is that companies LOVE heroes. I see it happen over, and over again (and usually with the same people). The manager asks the hero how long something will take, he underestimates the task, failing to account for testing, other inevitable issues, other priorites, etc. Manager loves the answer. There will be inevitable issues, and things come up in limited testing, but the hero will work stupid hours on little sleep producing crap quality, just to get SOMETHING going, even though it's a strict subset of what was promised. Since SOMETHING is going, and the hero casually notes that it took them heroic effort... he gets a "spot award" or some other trinket. Manager got the answer they wanted, the customer got SOMETHING, and the hero got his trinket. Everyone wins. And it will cause headaches and issues untold for many months down the road. Meanwhile, the non-hero estimates conservatively, management hates the answer, the customer gets a well (or at least less fragile) something later and hates that, and our non-hero gets the stink-eye. A manager told me long ago that customers don't want it right; the want it broken and quickly. That way they have something to bitch about. From a producer's standpoint, they can then bring out the hero to fix what should never have made it out to begin with, sometimes charge for it, and look like they're "responsive". And the customer can feel all smug that they made the vendor/producer do their little dance.