There are basically two kinds of deadlines: Real, and Arbitrary.
Real deadlines are those necessitated by some external, unchangeable event. For example legislation, the company running out of money, the CEO having to get up in front of the world press and announce the product, or a marketing campaign kicking off.
And then there are the much more common deadlines; The Arbitrary Deadline. They are recognizable by their basis in nothing at all - other than a decision that it would be nice to have X done by this or that date.
They are often employed in a naive attempt to speed up production. The thinking seems to be “give the wizkids a tight deadline, and they’ll really dig in and program the heck out of this”.
But here’s the thing about deadlines; they don’t make things any easier or faster to implement. No matter the deadline, you still have the same amount of work to do.
If your deadline is fixed, something else has to give; either quality or number of features. The Project Triangle sayeth so.
Give up on features and the product might not be what you imagined. Give up quality and you’ll pay for it later - with interests.
I have yet to meet an arbitrary deadline that couldn’t be budged in the face of realities. Challenge the deadline before you lose your sleep over it.
I am inclined to disagree. There are Four factors to take into consideration. First is that it might be more important to reach the deadline than having all functionality or testing done. I.e. it is a matter of focusing on the needs to have. Second is the developers themselves. There might be a number of reasons they are not 100% committed to the deadline. By asking everyone to focus on this deadline you can ensure that less important work from other places are downprioritized. Third is the matter of coordination. There might be a number of people, departments, other project, etc. who have build their plans around you reaching your deadline. There is a lot of communication effort involved when a deadline isn't reached. In a typical project you can have hundreds of those deadlines. Last it is wellknown in project management literature that adding resources doesn't make the project a success. Adding energy is the keyfactor in a projects success. And my experience is that there's a lot of positive energy in projects in the last week up to a deadline.
Kasper, I disagree with some if not all if your points.
If it is more important to ship soon, rather than finish everything, you need to prioritize an work on the highest priority stuff. You should be doing that anyway. The deadline does nothing to help if you're already aware of priorities.
External motivators, like deadlines or bonuses, may boost people's motivation briefly but most psychological research says that it spoils peoples joy in doing a job for its own sake which leads to more frustration and less motivation long term.
Christian, hmmm.. ja - så må vi hellere slå over i dansk. Jeg føler min tankegang bliver meget begrænset når jeg skal formulere mig på engelsk.
Lige præcis du var faktisk i mine tanker, da jeg skreve om, at det var vigtigt at fokusere op mod en deadline. For du har selv fortalt, at da du arbejde i google i Århus, så var det meget frit, hvad i lavede indtil i nærmede jer en deadline. Så var det huhej at få fokus på de rigtige ting og få dem til at fungere sammen. Hvordan var det gået uden deadlines?
Igen - jeg mener ikke, at deadlines skal bruges for at presse medarbejderne. De skal bruges for at fokusere energien på de rigtige opgaver. Så de skal sættes i god tid med respekt for den opgave, der skal løses. Og husk, at mange andre kan være afhængige af, at du bliver færdig til tiden.
Deadlines are used for many purposes. Using deadlines to motivate employees or to apply pressure are two of them.
I like to see (and use) deadlines as means of coordination between separate teams. I see the coordinating factor as motivation itself: you make a delivery on time and you can proceed with your planed work when others deliver to you on time.
The necesity of reducing functionality, quality, testing or other things in the project has nothing to do with deadlines - it's bad project planing.
For me deadlines are means of securing progress, coordination and quality in an otherwise well planed project.