When did estimates turn into deadlines?

One trick, if you can get away with it, is to ensure that you are always estimating for a fixed scope exclusive of unknown unknowns.

You should not provide an estimate for "feature X implemented", but rather for "feature X engine". If you discover additional work to be done, then you need to add "existing code refactor", "feature X+Y integration", etc. as discovered milestones.

Unfortunately, you need that nomenclature and understanding to go up the chain for this to work. If someone turns your "feature X engine" milestone into "feature X complete" with the same estimate, you are screwed.

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There is a related problem that I've seen in my career: leadership thinks that deadlines are "motivating".

These are the same people that want to heat their home to a temperature of 72F, but set the thermostat to 80F "so it will do it faster".

I was once in a leadership meeting, where the other participants forgot that I, lowly engineer, was invited to this meeting. Someone asked if we should accept that deadline X was very unlikely to be met, and substitute a more realistic deadline. To which the senior PM responded that "we never move deadlines! Engineering will just take any time given to them!"

Engineering, in that case, gave the time back when I left that team.

Setting the thermostat to 80F WILL bring the room to 72F faster than if you set it to 72F on most ovens/AC devices, unless the thermostat is located far away from the device.

Also, many engineering teams WILL take any time given to them.

But instead of making estimates and plans into hard deadlines (when facing the engineers), managers can make sure the organization is ready for overruns.

And as the estimated completion time approaches, they can remain reasonable understanding as long as the devs can explain what parts took longer than estimated, and why.

Part of this is for the manager to make sure customers, sales and/or higher level managers also do not treat the planned completion time as a deadline. And if promises have to be made, customer facing deadlines must be significantly later than the estimated completion time.

> These are the same people that want to heat their home to a temperature of 72F, but set the thermostat to 80F "so it will do it faster".

This usually works though in water based heating systems where the flow in the radiators is proportional to the error in temperature.

In practice it might work for electrical radiators too, as the radiator wont cut off when just the air close to it is warm.

> Setting the thermostat to 80F WILL bring the room to 72F faster than if you set it to 72F on most ovens/AC devices, unless the thermostat is located far away from the device.

The thermostat is meant to be far away. This isn't a valid analogy if the thermostat is measuring the temperature of the heater rather than the room.

> Also, many engineering teams WILL take any time given to them.

Agree, engineering teams are not single-stage heaters. They can make more progress toward the goal by working harder (in the short term), or reducing quality, or reducing scope.

But holding hours/week, quality and scope equal, engineering teams aren't going to implement faster because the deadline is sooner. If there is actual slack in the schedule, they will tend to increase scope (i.e. address tech debt, quality of life improvements, plan better).

It might seem that engineers take all the time given to them because most engineering orgs tend to oversubscribe engineering (which makes business sense, since engineering is expensive).