“Don’t hit the deadline with garbage”

I once had a project that was running late. Very late.

The engineer was simply failing to complete the work and really had no idea how to get it on track.

I foolishly decided it was best to keep emphasizing and pushing hard to hit the deadline for the next prototype build.

After many delays, the engineer ultimately released the prototype build.? It was absolutely garbage.? Everyone immediately knew that it was useless for testing or evaluation. A total waste of time and money.

When I excoriated the engineer about this, he said, “Well what did you expect?? You wanted me to build a prototype so I did!”

I was livid.

And ever since then I made sure to let my team know that deadlines are important, only if we're doing good work. If the output is bad, the deadline doesn’t matter – you’re just pretending.

“Don’t hit the deadline with garbage”.? You shouldn’t have to say it, but say it anyway - they need to know the priority.

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#schedulemanagement #communication #projectmanagement