Concepts · draft 30 of 95, not in the published book · outline v1.0.0, 2018, frozen · 243 words · the 2018 file · read and review
Deadlines
In 2018 this was an outline: a title and "Topics to cover and ideas". It was never in the published book, and it is shown exactly as it was left. The second edition fills it from the articles the map names.
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Topics to cover and ideas
- understand that many deadlines are just indications of an arbitrary point in the future when somebody would like to see something done
- usually deadlines are set without a realistic understanding of the original problem, the resources available and what is the definition of success
- Being able to hit deadlines is really important in business and life. The better you are at doing this, the more you will be trusted to deliver.
- What is important is to understand what are deadlines that can be missed, what are deadlines that are completely unrealistic and what are deadlines that HAVE to be meet (usually the ones connected to a specific event that cannot be moved)
- unrealistic deadlines can cause a lot of damage and prevent a lot of 'important but not urgent' activities (for example not improving the test environment because there isn't time before the next deadline). There are moments where there is a false economy of just focusing on short/medium term activities
- Solution is to break the problem into small milestones and be flexible (I prefer Kanban to Agile, with Scrumban not a bad alternative)
- Developers are the ones that actually have the real power to do something about meeting the deadlines, since they are the ones that will actually do the work
- One of the reasons Agile doesn't work very well is due to the amount of guess work that happens in the sprint planning
Answered since, on the newsroom: I miss it, so it is working, The most important question is whether they miss it. The map row.