Item — HN Reader

Fake deadlines suck. They cut against high-trust teamwork. They obscure real deadlines, including real commitments to customers.

The author writes "Once I became a manager, I finally saw why they were needed, but felt guilty about using them."

You SHOULD feel guilty. Truth matters. Trust matters.

If you're having problems with estimation and planning, then success looks like working on these areas-- not faking them.

Good tactics to try are work breakdown structures, planning poker, transparency for timelines, good project management tooling, critical chain scheduling, and above all trusting your teammates.

2 comments

I think transparency is a good policy and helps provide context and meaning, and actually builds trust.

So "fake deadlines" aren't needed. It is perfectly OK to show the plan to the team and to explain that, for example, the committed plan is that the test team will start overall testing on 1st May so we have to deliver our software to them no later than the week before. And then you can tell the team that you set the target date in advance of that to account for any issues and delays.

Now this is a real deadline and everyone knows why it exists and why it matters.

Now, if that 1st May was a "fake deadline" set above your head at least you are 'clean' and get to keep you leadership status among your team.

I think the pragmatic consensus is: feel guilty about it; then do it anyways.