What do you do if you miss a deadline in your Algorithms career?

It’s important to stay calm and composed to effectively handle the situation. As soon as I realize I'm going to miss a deadline, I will communicate this to my manager or team lead. I will try to be honest about the situation and avoid making excuses.

Yes, as SOON as you know you will miss a deadline, own up and discuss both why you will miss the deadline and what work remains. It may be that someone on the team has an idea that will be the Ah HA moment that lets you squeak past the deadline. Or it may be that opening up the discussion just helps everyone understand the issues you are facing. It may also turn out that the the story is bigger than everyone thought and it needs to be re-evaluated. No matter what you do, be open and honest about what you have done and what remains to do! Doing that will build trust and respect from the other members of your team!

In my experience, communication is key in avoiding misunderstandings, when I haven't met the deadline, I've always communicated my situation and discussed it with the team. It's better to explain in detail why the deadlines weren't met (technical difficulties, changes in requirements, underestimation of the necessary time, etc.). By communicating it to the team, it's possible that solutions may arise or alternative approaches may be found to readjust the current process and find the best solution. In this matter, I consider learning from what happened to be quite important to prevent it from happening again. There are always challenges in our profession; what's important is knowing how to face them in order to respond effectively.

If you are going to miss a deadline, take a moment to look at how your story fits into the larger project. Be ready to talk about how missing the deadline will affect other stories. Be ready and willing to ask for and accept help on your story. It may be that you have missed a critical point that will help you solve the problem. Or it may be that re-evaluating the story will reveal that it is larger than initially thought. Either way, you need to be able to answer questions about how the change in schedule will affect other stories and the over all project.

You can learn a lot when you are struggling to complete a story on time and ask for help. At least for me, when I am struggling and ask for help, I find that I learn a lot just from explaining my difficulties to someone else. Then when they start sharing ideas, those ideas gel with my explanation and I learn more that way than almost any other way! So yes, lean on your network and learn everything you can from them!