Management doesn’t get to cut the plan. They get to ask “what if we don’t do this, would it be possible to get this instead?” There’s no “we said it will take

Management doesn’t get to cut the plan. They get to ask “what if we don’t do this, would it be possible to get this instead?” There’s no “we said it will take X” and management saying “do it in X/3”. That’s no longer a plan made by developers that developers are comfortable standing behind. Over 10 weeks, you would plan based on 2/3 of time for 8 weeks, with nothing planned in the final 2. If things are running behind, this becomes buffer to finish it out. If things are finished on schedule by the 8 week mark then the final 2 weeks becomes time for developers to pursue other things. Training, prototyping things they’ve wanted to build, whatever. It’s the old Google 20% time concept built into each increment.