Reply to: Deadlines don't exist

[original PM]

You have to set deadlines, boundaries and limits for people to work to. I recently had a guy (coder) who kept missing every deadline given. 'The way I see it MF is, that the work is still going to be there the next day anyway so I don't need to stress if I get finished on time or not'.

Whereas I understand his point that in our company were so busy there is work to do everyday I don't think he understood my point. Unfortunately for him his argument was only true as long as he had the job. Which he now doesn't. :-)

Could not agree more people need to understand they are part of a process in this example he was delaying downstream activities such as testing and testing resources need to be organised etc

For me the team needs to agree realistic deadlines and stick to them. If the task suddenly becomes more difficult than first estimated flag it early and rebaseline.

It's not difficult if we remove the aggressive blame culture often found where kissing ass and stabbing backs is more important than getting the Damn job done

[Sysman]

Instead of running around like headless chickens attempting to meet a deadline that some senior arsehole stated simply because it is before the next shareholder's meeting.

I despair sometimes...

In the late 90s the job of fulfilling a requirement that had floated to the top of a To Do list landed on me.

It was more to do with a power struggle between a young manager and our director than actually needing the program in question. The first I knew of it was "Why is this 3 weeks late?". It simply hadn't been on the radar in any of our department's weekly meetings during the 6 months since I had arrived.

To put it into a nutshell someone had been trying to edit a config file using the equivalent of Notepad and finding that difficult wanted a full blown GUI program to do the job. Furthermore the department who had instigated that request no longer had responsibility for maintaining said config file, it was down to our department.

After a couple of days of getting "Is is ready yet?" every quarter of an hour I put my foot down. I amended the existing documentation to specify the use of an editor more suited to the task and added examples and that was it.

[Sysman]

originally from

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Douglas Adams
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)

</pedant>

Aye, but the deadline that Ford and Arthur encountered at the beginning of the story was somewhat pressing.

[MarillionFan]

Fair enough. I'm talking about the sort of deadlines that are made up by guesswork (often completely unrealistic) and when not hit there is a completely over the top reaction and ridiculous blame game politics that destroys relationships.

You have to set deadlines, boundaries and limits for people to work to. I recently had a guy (coder) who kept missing every deadline given. 'The way I see it MF is, that the work is still going to be there the next day anyway so I don't need to stress if I get finished on time or not'.

Whereas I understand his point that in our company were so busy there is work to do everyday I don't think he understood my point. Unfortunately for him his argument was only true as long as he had the job. Which he now doesn't. :-)

[cojak]

Deadlines don't exist

While I've seen lots of business cases 99% of them have been crap and there has been nothing else to follow.

In my experience management wouldn't recognise ROI if it walked in an hit them on the head.

If they did they would understand what business drivers they are trying to meet, understand what benefits management is and at least attempt to pull out the most obvious benefits and put a proper plan in place to realise those benefits.

Instead of running around like headless chickens attempting to meet a deadline that some senior arsehole stated simply because it is before the next shareholder's meeting.

I despair sometimes...

[MPwannadecentincome]

In my experience deadlines exist for the return on investment to be realised.

In small companies this is often a back of the fag packet calculation with senior directors/owners/managers/whoever being optimistic for the day their profits go up hence a bigger dividend or bonus.

In big corporates all projects need a business case for approval for funds unless a senior manager/director has some "spare" funding for something "on the side". For the former, a funding board will look at when the return on investment predicted to kick in before agreeing to allow a project to start, so there is competition for limited funds overall and only those projects that promise to deliver increased profit quicker will be funded, this then drives targets for the business benefits to be realised as quickly as possible, bonuses and deadlines then follow. For the latter, "on the side" projects are often kept below the radar from corporate headquarters hence need to finish quickly, sometime the deadline is simply to spend the money before the end of the financial quarter, half year or year, particularly if the funding would be lost if "not" spent.

Off topic: Very few projects achieve their predicted return on investment, often not within a few months of their original targets sometimes never, hence the deadlines are basically crap. If they all did hit those targets then profits at these companies would be shooting up rapidly!

[Contractoid]

Maturity needed on aisle 4

Mmmm. I liked your earlier post and it had some very good points to it. Sorry though, i'm sticking to my guns on this. I have seen too many disputes, arguments and even broken careers caused by deadlines conjured ¬up out of thin air by vastly overpaid and overrated individuals with personal agendas completely out of alignment with the needs of the business or within the bounds of reality. Ner! (That’s me being mature)

[EternalOptimist]

I believe we are on the same page on this theme! I'm now one of the villagers pissed off with the boy crying wolf.
I

to be fair, the wolf did get them in the end

[original PM]

I agree you need aspirational delivery dates so as everyone has someothing to work towards.

However these should be set by the project team based on work required and resources available.

If that date is not good enough for execs then reduce work/increase resources.

however always remember that just because 1 woman can have 1 baby in 9 months it does not mean 9 women can have 1 baby in 1 month.

[VectraMan]

If Project Management is worth anything it ought to be able to recognise that a deadline is never going to be met well in advance and force appropriate business decisions to allow for that. So a deadline should never be missed. It never works like that in practice though.

PermieCo seem to not only be free of deadlines, but don't have any kind of goal in mind of when the project might be finished. Nice in a way not to have pressure, but in reality I'm the sort of person that likes to deliver actually working things and find the sleepy approach a bit frustrating.

[suityou01]

I believe we are on the same page on this theme! I'm now one of the villagers pissed off with the boy crying wolf. If only deadlines were set for the right reasons then I would be more inclined to respect them and pull out all the stops to hit them. More often than not the scenario is as you described above where project teams get all their knickers in a twist about arbitrary ego dates. Total Pants.
I

Maturity needed on aisle 4

[Contractoid]

There are often deadlines which if not met do have dire consequences.

However we do live in a world of Ego deadlines where Exec A says I want this in by point x for no other reason that i want this in by point x and it will stroke my ego to see people trying to achieve it and it will also stoke my inner spoilt child if I get the chance to shout at someone.

At the time nothing has been done on the project but there is already a constraining deadline made of nothing more than ego.

The classic (as we move towards Xmas) is the -- this must be done by Xmas...

A free pint to the first person with real evidence this has been said to them.

I believe we are on the same page on this theme! I'm now one of the villagers pissed off with the boy crying wolf. If only deadlines were set for the right reasons then I would be more inclined to respect them and pull out all the stops to hit them. More often than not the scenario is as you described above where project teams get all their knickers in a twist about arbitrary ego dates. Total Pants.
I

[original PM]

There are often deadlines which if not met do have dire consequences.

However we do live in a world of Ego deadlines where Exec A says I want this in by point x for no other reason that i want this in by point x and it will stroke my ego to see people trying to achieve it and it will also stoke my inner spoilt child if I get the chance to shout at someone.

At the time nothing has been done on the project but there is already a constraining deadline made of nothing more than ego.

The classic (as we move towards Xmas) is the -- this must be done by Xmas...

A free pint to the first person with real evidence this has been said to them.

[Contractoid]

Since when is North 'up'?

Depends on which direction your moral compass is pointing

What happens if I turn my map upside down, Contractoid? Hmmm?

Um. You will see what colour the inside of the earth is?

[suityou01]

If I might post an experience of such please thank you very much no alright then.


I was technical lead on project to deliver change to a suite of legacy applications. We were a dependency for a 16m SAP rollout. However, my project was not part of the SAP programme. Also from a different budget. We did not meet with the SAP team, and were not invited to their project planning meetings.

The reason, I know for fact, is that we were the patsie. Left outside in the cold to be hung from the highest yard arm as the excuse for the SAP delivery being late.

This is project politics. So our deadline was entirely arbitrary, based on another entirely arbitrary deadline set by the BOD to the SAP team. They called it a "drive to date" rather than a deadline. Also in meetings the senior exec had a "pet phrase of the week" so it seemed. One week it was "skin in the game". So every meeting they would drop the phrase in, no matter how clumsily or incorrectly. It was something of great amusement to me, and I have learned to smile, laugh, pee myself with hysterics internally while still waters run very very deep.

Now in this situation the temptation is to sit around and scoff at these ridiculous deadlines, just how idiotic the management are with their stupid "drive to dates" and buzzphrases. This is a valid thought process, but it must not end there.

At the time I was just back in work after a nervous breakdown, and when the technical lead left with a nervous breakdown (seriously) and I was asked to take over as tech lead I had to do some soul searching before accepting.

Then I decided to not only turn this project around, but also then turn it around in such a way that these SAP guys would be in the line of fire. They were shameless. Each meeting would start with "Ok to first order of business, who can we blame ..." then the eyes would swivel toward me and my project. More grist to the mill.

So the tactics were simple. Accept the deadline. Prioritise the work, estimate the work, find out what fits. So for each mini deadline, we were always on blob. Cover yer arse emails all in the drawer. Because one thing I do know is I nearly always see problems coming way before anyone else does. One day I think I may make a good PM.

In the end we called the tune, delivered on time and discovered some dependencies going back the other way and pointed them out in good time.

To be fair to them, they went live only 2 months late, which for a SAP programme is terrific. I learned a lot from them about "management reporting", and the art of "spin". It's ok so long as you don't get found out, and you're confident you can make up the lost ground.

The point is a date is just a date. It's nothing to loathe, or fear or moan about. It's just a string of numbers written down. If you learn how to use a deadline to your advantage you'll even start to love them, like Stockholm syndrome I suspect.

The greater problems arise when people or projects you depend on don't share your sense of urgency, through bad planning. Stakeholders that are only "dotted line" reporting to the board. These are the things to watch out for.

When in life you have great pain, is definately the time when you learn the most. Ever heard the expression "no pain no gain". The same is true for projects. The way to build a career is to think that if you work your nuts off and hit the deadline then you not only have a good reference, but a great story to tell for interviews to come.

Try and zoom out and see the bigger picture, and stop letting deadlines annoy you but rather see them as empowering.

HTH

PS The above is all true.