> ... aren't issues of motivation unless you are seeking to get them to work overtime to overcome these blockers. OP: Is their compensation and performance ass

> ... aren't issues of motivation unless you are seeking to get them to work overtime to overcome these blockers. OP: Is their compensation and performance assessment linked to getting things done to your deadlines? >> even if the milestones are aligned by everyone. > Everyone agreeing on something doesn't mean that everything is understood or correct. It could be the tyranny of the collective "we": "We should ship X by date Y". Is everybody clear on their individual deliverable to make that happen? When you do post-mortems after a deadline is missed, does everybody have a different picture of who was depending on who to deliver what? Was the root-cause of that lack of incentive, lack of buy-in, or your communication?