[justin_oaks]

How are deadline dates assigned? Is the deadline exactly the same as the estimated completion date?

Realistic estimates aren't padded, but they still have significant probability of being inaccurate. After all, they're estimates, not information from the future transmitted to the past.

[kalleth]

This is where the ideal meets the annoying reality of The Enterprise (tm).

I can't talk in too much detail, but in general, the deadline date was fixed through commercial contracts signed at a high enough level that engineering didn't have sight of them. The concept and commercial case was sound, but the implementation hadn't been worked out yet, when a date was set.

My strong preference would be for estimation to come first, of course, before a deadline is picked (and even then, only picked if it is really a necessary deadline), which is then based on reality, and also include some slack for unintended discoveries.

[hu3]

I had this "Enterprise sets the deadlines" experience just yesterday.

I delivered a spreadsheet with detailed information of how long it would take to develop each feature of the new module they wanted. It totalled around 3 months of development.

Fancy suit folks told me 3 months wouldn't do because sales promised it would be ready in 2 months. Then I was asked where could shortcuts be taken.

In the end we had to cut features that will certainly upset our client given their initial expectation.