Deadlines
Or silly measurements of time
If you work at web development I’m sure you suffered with this little guys a couple of times, specially if those were set by your manager.
Let me start bystating that deadlines are -in many cases- lies. Since programming is problem solving, you cannot always accurately estimate when a problem is going to be 100% solved.
Resolving a problem, usually, involves the following steps:
- Understanding the problem
- Figuring out a possible solution
- Doing research about different solutions
- Selecting & implementing the chosen solution
- Showing it to the end user & iterate from their feedback
Since you don’t know how much time all of this steps will take it’s usually hard to estimate how much time the whole process will take. It’s easily to overestimate or underestimate deadlines. The latest will be the worst case scenario, because you’ll probably get shout & be hated.
Also, I have good news for you…
If you don’t reach the deadline, No one is going to die.
Maybe you’ll lose the client, maybe you’ll get fired, maybe you won’t get paid. But anyone is getting killed or physically harmed. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take delivery dates/deadlines serious.
But what it means is that you shouldn’t stress over them too much at the point you end up getting ill or mentally burned for life. Isn’t not worth it.
So, in a nutshell… It Ships when it ships.
