Here's what you don't understand: Managers have to hit deadlines. Managers also write their own deadlines (to a large extent). So they do what any rational pe

Here's what you don't understand: Managers have to hit deadlines. Managers also write their own deadlines (to a large extent). So they do what any rational person (or at least, anyone with the savvy to become a manager) will do - they write deadlines which can't possibly be missed. Lots of abstract terms (review methodology, test, design, etc), without links to concrete deliverables. Since there's no "real" outputs, no-one can check whether the work has been done. Obviously, there'll be a crunch at some point (quick, we have to actually build the web page we were designing!), but most of the time it doesn't matter whether people are feverishly working, or just letting the wheels spin.