Due dates are - Budgeting. We're willing to spend our company's resources for X months on this. You can always do some improvements here and there and end up w

Due dates are - Budgeting. We're willing to spend our company's resources for X months on this. You can always do some improvements here and there and end up with forever-vaporware. A due date encourages forcusing on the most important parts and accepting "good enough" instead of getting paralyzed by perfectionism. - A necessity when there are multiple items competing for people's time and attention. If the development team has an important project and a project with a due date, there is a high risk that the important project will end up deprioritized compared to the one with the due date. That means you have to have a due date if you don't want to end up on the bottom of the pile. These are not laws of natures or impossible to work around, but you can either try to fight those effects... or just set a due date. Sometimes, the "lazy" way is better, because it works. That's why people set due dates.