In order to influence your boss in this case requires understanding what is intended, so you can offer a better alternative. As you know, setting a deadline do

In order to influence your boss in this case requires understanding what is intended, so you can offer a better alternative. As you know, setting a deadline doesn't require that management believes bug fixing is predictable. They could well know it's unpredictable and set a deadline anyway. You know your bosses better than I do, but all I can make from this example is a boss who wants to make fixing this bug top priority. Possibly the boss wanted to say, "Stop all other work until this bug is fixed" and then, thinking what that might bring -- after all, developers are lazy -- decided to set a false deadline. The intent seems to be to set priorities. An executive once told us -- a small group of developers -- in a meeting that work must be finished by the deadline come hell or high water. We looked at each other and didn't know what he was trying to say. Obviously there are trade-offs here, so do we trade off quality? Features? What exactly was the executive thinking to sacrifice -- besides unpaid overtime of employees. That's a given. Maybe the boss can remove obstacles or get help from other departments. These are things that bosses can do that you can't do. Maybe all the boss wants is to get you to say what the hold up is, for example "we need some more information from one of our partners", in order to assist you. Maybe your boss gets colicky when bugs aren't fixed. You could suggest setting a zero defects policy, which more or less states that bugs are fixed before new features are added. This is one way to meet deadlines that trades off features in return for being able to ship more or less at any time. It could be there's even a missing role here that you can fill over time. If you can be an expert at treating your boss as a customer, interviewing to discover what exactly is desired, and suggesting technical and management solutions, you'll be a great deal more valuable.