Deadlines Are Harmful

If you’re going to take one thing away from this post, take this: long-term objectives demand consistent short-term action and predictable performance improvements, not one big mindless push. Besides being pointless, deadlines are also harmful because: 1. Deadlines don’t improve a team’s performance. Setting a goal doesn’t cause the team to ship faster. It either causes them to ship less or work more. 2. Deadlines misalign incentives and discourage long-term thinking. They incentivize teams to prioritize short-term gains to meet deadlines instead of long-term predictable and sustainable performance. 3. Deadlines are not actionable. By the time the team misses a deadline, it’s too late to do anything productive about it.

A screenshot of an English-language article argues that deadlines are harmful to teams. It explains that deadlines do not improve performance, encourage short-term thinking, and cannot be acted on after they are missed. The meme is used as a reaction to deadline pressure, rushed work, or unrealistic project demands.

• @jemalloc / 970 2022-09-20