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The Best Defense
In “The Design Of Design“, Fred Brooks states:
The best defense against requirements creep is schedule urgency.
Unfortunately, “schedule urgency” is also the best defense against building a high quality and enduring system. Corners get cut, algorithm vetting is skipped, in-situ documentation is eschewed, alternative designs aren’t investigated, and mistakes get conveniently overlooked.
Yes, “schedule urgency” is indeed a powerful weapon. Wield it carefully, lest you impale yourself.
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Is it a schedule problem or a planning problem. Many bad schedules are agreed to by the developers so they dig their hole.
Regardless of whether there is a schedule problem or not, “schedule urgency” can still be used as a weapon to wrongly cut stuff out that should stay in, and to rightly cut stuff out that should stay out.
It’s not just developers that dig their own holes. I assert that management digs more holes for developers than developers dig for themselves. That’s because lots, if not most, of schedules are commanded down from on high by people who know nothing about software development – CEOs, directors, program managers, project managers, product managers, proposal writers, marketeers. Some (most?) of these dudes never even ask developers for estimates.
True “schedule urgency” may come down from on top more often, but I have seen instances in my career where the the schedule is put in by the developer with out any real thought and it will create the urgency. The other driver is a customer that wants it “now”. This will cause the schedule urgency.
As soon as a date is written down and publicized (regardless of who generated it and the quality of thought that went into it) “schedule urgency” auto-magically appears. People, especially managers (since they don’t have to do the work), automatically forget that it is a guesstimate and interpret it as a firm commitment – and there will be hell to pay if the commitment isn’t met.