It may be shocking to you if you are involved in management but actually pressuring people to meet arbitrary deadlines is not an effective way to improve productivity

Management is boring as hell. You get tasks, you ask dev s how long, and have to periodically ask on a progress/status update.

The only trick I've found out, is to track a developer's factor and multiply that by what he gives out when bringing to upper management.

Always start with 3.

Just like IQ-tests are just a snapshot, mental work can't be measured in time. That's why I hate management asking 'how long will X take'.

They often forget - because we are working with a keyboard & we can type x words/minute - that there is a lot more effort needed to solve their constipation problems.

Deadlines are a good thing. But they SHOULD be reasonable.

If there are no deadlines, nothing will get done. (trust me, tried this aproach, even with motivated team, nothing is delivred without a deadline)

My attitude has evolved into: "I can hit any deadline you want to specify. You go ahead and rattle off any date. I'll be the one that determines what features will be ready by then. If you don't like it, you can a.) push out the date b.) cut back the features. It's all up to you."

The best part is when the data analyst excel user scopes and ditctates the timeline of the lead developers feature set to the employer.