> No, the idea is that you don't set hard deadlines for the team - they're pointless. I think the issue stems more from the prevalent confusion between deadlin

> No, the idea is that you don't set hard deadlines for the team - they're pointless. I think the issue stems more from the prevalent confusion between deadlines and milestones in part of the IT world. I used to work on ship command system. The ship would be stopped for maintenance for a couple of months and available for installation and qualification only during this set period of time. Anything not ready for this window would not be delivered. That's an actual deadline which the project had to meet. As a project manager, it was my job to keep track of my team milestones to ensure we would be ready for the deadline and find solution when we had issues. It's not only about overtime by the way. You might need a temporary increase of the size of the team, access to external resources, time with an expert or a scope adjustement. Sometimes it's just impossible to meet the deadline and you just want to know as soon as possible to reschedule at minimum cost. You do need to make an estimate in order to plan your milestones but you also need to commit or you will never know if you are on the right course.