[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.