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It depends also on how you characterize your deadlines. If you allow slippage when things take longer than expected, or to adapt to changing requirements, you c
by Tamerlin 18y ago
It depends also on how you characterize your deadlines. If you allow slippage when things take longer than expected, or to adapt to changing requirements, you can impose deadlines without laying the hammer down.
In the end though, that ends up being more a case of managing scope than of imposing deadlines.
Give the developers a well-defined scope, and unless they're putzes, they'll get the job done. Give them a hard deadline, and either they'll slip or they'll do shoddy work.
Most projects base everything on deadlines. As a result, most of them deliver shoddy projects, and the company ends up with something that either doesn't work, or it works barely but that requires far more maintenance than the project's scope justifies.
- aasarava 18y agoAbsolutely agree with you about needing a well defined scope and how that can reduce the chance of an overrun. Likewise, laying the hammer down simply because an arbitrary deadline is on the calendar isn't good project management. But I still argue that a good, reasonable deadline that everyone on the team has a say in setting acts as a commitment -- the team is saying, "yes, we agree to deliver a product in this timeframe." Once you've made that commitment, the deadline then acts as a forcing factor that drives everyone to prioritize the most important tasks.
- Tamerlin 18y agoAgreed -- that's what prevents the endless rounds of re-factoring, and keeps everyone focused on building a product, rather than drifting off on tangents. We're saying the same thing, here. :)