My CS 404 Thoughts

I am no stranger to the idea of a missed deadline. I have seen construction projects that I've worked on go way over schedule, and I've seen numerous software products late to market. The question I have to ask is: who sets these deadlines? In the case of construction projects (houses or other buildings) it was almost universally the real estate agent or some other agent of the development. In the case of software products, I would guess it is usually middle to upper management and marketing executives. This presents the question: how are these deadlines chosen? In my experience, this has next to nothing to do with the level of complexity of the project. I worked on several three to five hundred thousand dollar custom log homes before I moved to Provo, and we were well past the "deadline" on each one. The problem was that the person who set the deadline had no clue how much effort was involved in the vaulted ceilings, multi-pitched roofs, tongue-and-groove interior siding, and the multitudes of other "custom" or "rustic" options that were sold. I would make a guess that this is the same with the frequently late software products (Windows Vista comes to mind). I would also guess that the whole economy is somewhat inured to missed or pushed back deadlines. In the case of our construction projects, if the development real estate agents would have asked us how much time it would take, invariably we could have helped them set a deadline that we could assuredly make (barring some kind of catastrophe). So I don't think that the question is so much "the case of the missed deadline" as it is "the case of the over-eager marketing and management people."