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The Death Of The Deadline As We Know It
- terra_t 16y agoIf I've got any responsibility for the management of a project (and that includes putting tickets in an issue tracking system and resolving them), I ask the question of "What happens if we miss this deadline?" I usually ask this question at least once a week, when the subject of the deadline comes up at the meeting. There really are some things where, if you don't do something by a certain time, you might as well not do it at all (say, a grant application.) On the other hand, I was involved in a project that ran three months late, but somehow we managed to have meetings with the client where we always agreed we were a week behind schedule, but that everything was cool. The customer was very satisfied by that project, however, my continued involvement was expensive for my firm.
- edragonu 16y agoHeh, by asking "What happens if we miss this deadline?" you're transform it into a liveline, IMHO. But what happens if you "miss a deadline" in your personal life? Do you have any personal life deadlines?
- terra_t 16y agoyou'd better get your costume ready by Oct 31 if you want to have a halloween costume. You can slip your kid's birthday party to another day before you mail out the invitations, but after that you're committed. Christmas only comes on Dec 25, etc.
- edragonu 16y agoThat I know. It's the "dead" part that bothers me, not the commitment. Who dies on a deadline? The "task"? Or you, little by little? That's my question...
- wccrawford 16y agoWe started asking that recently, after some odd (and impossible) deadlines started being created. The answer was 'nothing'. Not really a deadline if missing it doesn't matter a bit. Before that experience, I never really considered asking what would happen. I imagined all kinds of scary things. Now... Now I know to ask. Because the deadline might be a 'no line'.