Product Development Deadlines

Deadlines are in all projects without exception and in almost all product development processes. In project management, deadlines are easy to directly relate to revenue, but for products, things are a little more complicated. What role do deadlines play in product development? Is it possible to do without them?



_{Based on an article by John Cutler. Published with permission to discuss and share experiences.}



The simplest type of deadline is commercial . If you “punch” it, you clearly lose a lot of money. There are few such deadlines: usually it is either a race with a competitor, or is associated with a calendar event (holiday, exhibition, etc.). It happens that it is a commercial deadline that is declared, but after “breaking through” it turns out that the money is not lost. It happens that the probability of losing a lot of money is declared. This is more difficult to verify, but it is also possible (statistically) - it often turns out that direct losses are either overrated or not at all.



This is a consequence of the abuse of artificial deadlines. Most of the deadlines in the food ecosystem (as opposed to the design one) are artificial.



Why are they needed:

• Limit costs . It makes no sense to spend more than X resources on a feature / hypothesis
• Create a healthy atmosphere of urgency . A team that keeps pace and is in good shape works more efficiently
• Stimulate cutting scopes . Polishing features quickly reduces marginal utility
• Prevent team bouts . Free swimming without business landmarks is inefficient
• Encourage goal setting and focus . Increases the effectiveness of each team member
• Coordinate dependencies . We agreed that team X will be able to start work after xx.xx.xxxx. Rescheduling and reserving resources is inefficient
• Coordinate business activities . The start of sales is scheduled for xx.xx.xxxx. By this time, a budget may be allocated or marketing activities planned.
• Create measurable responsibility . If it’s clear who is responsible for what, then it’s clear how / when to promote - transparency of feedback
• Create a sense of predictability and tranquility among business partners . The trust of business units allows you to simplify communication and build more efficient processes

Sometimes artificial deadlines are used appropriately, sometimes not. In any case, it is useful to understand and honestly advertise their true purpose at a particular moment.



Examples of suboptimal use of artificial deadlines:

• Sprints without a usable result . If it is known in advance that there will be nothing to look at as a result of the sprint, and nothing new will be integrated into the service, then the overhead to interrupt work (end / start of the sprint) will probably not pay off
• Quarterly / annual grocery plans . Due to the huge number of non-deterministic elements, the probability of significant errors in both planning and product hypotheses is close to 100%, which discredits such delayed deadlines
  
  
• Deadline based on rating . It solves a number of problems and is very popular, but it contains flaws:
  
  
  
  
  • stimulates “premature convergence” - a locally optimal solution is chosen, although the globally optimal could be very close
  • may not depend on the team, as the assessment does not include external factors
  • focuses the team on work "on time" instead of work "on the result", which increases the number of erroneous decisions
  
  
  

Suggestions for possible improvements:

• "Correct" timeboxes . General guideline / initiative for several weeks. Within this period, short sprints with verifiable implementation hypotheses. The deadline is fixed, the scope is arbitrary and is repeatedly reviewed
• Flow control . We simulate the work as a stream (for example: Reinertsen , ToC , kanban ), optimize it. In parallel, we are looking for ways to carry out frequent integrations (automatic retro for activities longer than X days, CI / CD , SAFe IP / PI , etc.)
• If you use deadlines, then clearly indicate what problem they solve

The main idea : to think one level higher. Trying to find a solution to specific business problems (motivation, coordination, etc.), and not to crutch crutches in the form of deadlines in any incomprehensible situation.



Discussion : What other case studies do deadlines have? What alternative approaches can be used instead of deadlines?