Completely agreed -- and I hit on the same themes on a talk on software engineering management (and its pathologies) at Surge on Friday[1]. The date fetishizat

Completely agreed -- and I hit on the same themes on a talk on software engineering management (and its pathologies) at Surge on Friday[1]. The date fetishization so common in software engineering management is a direct result of non-technical management, who do not understand that every piece of software is solving a heretofore unsolved problem (even if a teensy tiny one) -- and that the unknowns often cause software to take much longer to build than one would anticipate. This gives a kind of CAP analogue for software: schedule, quality, features -- pick only two. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/surge2013 http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/surge2013