Unfortunately development does not exist in a vacuum.
The Date(TM) can have a slew of dependencies that chain react down the line. Perhaps your client's training was booked months in advance with flights and stand-in schedules all based all on some dev feature being available in class. Or hard to reschedule subcontractors were booked six months ago for Pen-Testing and The Date(TM) is slipping. Things like this have costs and consequences beyond technical software debt and in many cases come with enforceable penalty clauses which you don't want to trigger.
Yes, there is always a tension between the hands down best guess of what was possible when you made the commitment vs the actual critical path as revealed by experience over time, but you live with those unknown risks and degrees of certainty and proceed. You Meet The Date(TM).
I also think Radical Transparency plays a role here that was lost on the 'successful' PM referenced in GP's story. If you cancel weekends and duct tape together things you need to fix later to meet a date then everyone involved should be 100% clear on why it is so important. And agree. There is a reason some activities are called Sprints. You can't do them all the time. A Sprint is a defined burst of energy- maximally applied. Anything else is a different kind of race. Business as Usual, is a marathon for instance. But, occasionally, you need to produce a Sprint to Meet The Date (TM). Point is that the GP's PM-in-question might have accomplished more with better honesty relationships including a well thought out & generous TOIL [1] program that could compensate for the off chance that some institutional shortsightedness at an earlier planning stage- where commitments were made that may have seemed like a good idea at the time- proved more difficult than anticipated and resulted in a need for Sprints.
I agree that The Date™ is sometimes driven by legitimate factors. And that other things often become tied on to The Date™.
But The Date™ also is a BFD when none of that is true. And if things like client training and penalty clauses were all that important, people would be extremely careful about picking dates that are realistic. Instead, frequently The Date™ is made up and people get fetishistic about Meeting The Date™ in ways that are untethered from actual circumstances or consequences.
That's a sign to me that the real purpose of The Date™ is not the nominal purpose.
> There is a reason some activities are called Sprints. You can't do them all the time.
This is a perfect example of how distinct the nominal purpose and the actual behaviors are. In the Scrum framework, things are structured as an unending series of Sprints, back to back from here to eternity. Whereas in reality, a sprinter like Usain Bolt runs, what, 10 or 20 officially timed races per year at under a minute each? And the rest of the time recovering, prepping, and training.
The Date(TM) can have a slew of dependencies that chain react down the line. Perhaps your client's training was booked months in advance with flights and stand-in schedules all based all on some dev feature being available in class. Or hard to reschedule subcontractors were booked six months ago for Pen-Testing and The Date(TM) is slipping. Things like this have costs and consequences beyond technical software debt and in many cases come with enforceable penalty clauses which you don't want to trigger.
Yes, there is always a tension between the hands down best guess of what was possible when you made the commitment vs the actual critical path as revealed by experience over time, but you live with those unknown risks and degrees of certainty and proceed. You Meet The Date(TM).
I also think Radical Transparency plays a role here that was lost on the 'successful' PM referenced in GP's story. If you cancel weekends and duct tape together things you need to fix later to meet a date then everyone involved should be 100% clear on why it is so important. And agree. There is a reason some activities are called Sprints. You can't do them all the time. A Sprint is a defined burst of energy- maximally applied. Anything else is a different kind of race. Business as Usual, is a marathon for instance. But, occasionally, you need to produce a Sprint to Meet The Date (TM). Point is that the GP's PM-in-question might have accomplished more with better honesty relationships including a well thought out & generous TOIL [1] program that could compensate for the off chance that some institutional shortsightedness at an earlier planning stage- where commitments were made that may have seemed like a good idea at the time- proved more difficult than anticipated and resulted in a need for Sprints.
[1] https://citrushr.com/blog/leave-absence/what-is-toil-and-how...