[fendy3002]

A genuine deadline is good, an artificial one isn't. Sometimes budget limitation can be a genuine hard deadline. A fixed special days, such as new year or election date, can also make a hard deadline. That being said, you'll need to move the deadline some time ahead to provide buffer.

Shorter, soft deadlines and milestones are also good, since they provide a measurement between long term planning and current progress. Without them larger projects will likely failed than success.

However management loves short, hard deadlines with artificial reasons, which makes them stressful.

[laserlight]

Your comment made me realize my problem with deadlines. Whenever I hear about a deadline, it has always been the case that management would like to have a time constraint without giving in from any of the other constraints, e.g., scope, budget, quality. It's like trying to find a solution to a set of equations when constraints guarantee that there is none.