I can imagine the client throwing a dart at a calendar and saying "This will be the deadline!"

New product idea just dropped...

@Demolishun Yes! Cryptographically secure random deadline generator, and the accompanying random estimate generator. As a service, obvs.

@donkulator I was thinking more about a digital dartboard. It would be a technical challenge.

Throw first dart for the number.
Throw the second dart for days/weeks/months.

From what I hear: some stakeholders are fully aware that they ask for arbitrary deadlines - but they do it intentionally to start a discussion - assuming that this will ”get the discussion going faster” and force the dev team to think about it and respond saying if it is not possible and why - ans suggest a new date

@jiraTicket or they do this to cover up the fact that they don‘t know what they are doing.

@Lensflare Yeah. I think in many cases it is willful ignorance. Or basically just a confession that the deadline dates do not really matter - it's just a part of bureaucracy that they need to insert some date into a Roadmap for their next presentation. And it doesn't really matter if that deadline date is missed. The presentation just has to be written.

A classic example that comes to mind is whenever it's close to christmas a bunch of deadlines will be set to "week before christmas" - and they will not be updated even if conditions change.

(But sometimes they are nice enough to say "Either we make the deadline or we don't. We'll see")

Atleast if clients say that, it kinda makes sense cause they r not aware of what goes into building it nd how much time it will really take.. it's worse when project managers do this! 😤