I've seen this countless times in my 40-year career. I believe what's going on is that people will work harder on something if they are behind schedule, so the

I've seen this countless times in my 40-year career. I believe what's going on is that people will work harder on something if they are behind schedule, so the manager gives them an impossible schedule to begin with, knowing full well that they will never meet it. Does the benefit of the added pressure outweigh the loss of management credibility? The one case in my career where this practice created serious problems was on a large complex program with an impossible schedule where management was having a daily "stand up" that went on for about two hours (cutting productivity by about 20% and demoralizing everyone). Each day, the team members would describe yesterday's accomplishments and re-baseline the schedule. Over a period of one year there was a 60% attrition rate, and I permanently lost all drive to meet schedules. Thereafter, I simply worked on the stuff I needed to work on without any regard for schedules. I never really recovered from this "burn out", but fortunately I was productive enough that it didn't impact my career.