Due dates are great as a synchronization point between teams who don't speak the same language (i.e. don't understand the details of each other's work). Most no

Due dates are great as a synchronization point between teams who don't speak the same language (i.e. don't understand the details of each other's work). Most notably, a customer will be happier to hear "it'll be done by March 11" than "it'll be done when we have moved all the data from the old to the new database." It's a "lazy" solution, but not all customers want to have to care about your (internal) language. (And just like there may be scope creep in requirements, there may be deadline creep. You have to watch out for both. Just setting a due date won't solve your project management, and neither is just writing a requirements doc once.) For everything else, I agree.