Imposed Deadlines: A Challenge for the Product Team

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Have you ever experienced a situation where management, business, or marketing imposed a delivery date for a solution? A date that, if not met, puts your product team’s competence and effectiveness into question. This is much more common than any product, design, or development professional would like to admit. Most companies operate under authoritarian directives without conducting a thorough analysis of the problem, the proposed solution, or the consequences. Furthermore, they do not empower or give autonomy to teams to address objectives freely and proactively. This presents a serious difficulty and leads to situations where there is a total disconnect between expectations and execution.

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Why Are Delivery Dates Imposed?

Before discussing how to avoid or deal with this situation, we need to understand the reasons behind this problem and what causes it. Depending on your company, you may find one or more of these causes:

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Organizational Culture

This is one of the most common reasons I have encountered. In highly hierarchical cultures or those with a "top-to-down" mentality, decisions are often made at higher levels without sufficient consultation with the teams responsible for executing the tasks. This reflects a culture that values authority over the technical knowledge or practical experience of the product team and even marketing.

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Lack of Trust

In companies where this situation has been ongoing for some time, we often find a lack of trust in the team’s ability to estimate and manage their own time and resources. This usually happens due to past experiences where expectations were not met or simply a misperception that the team does not understand the urgency or commercial importance behind deadlines. It's a vicious cycle that requires a significant initial trust exercise to reverse the situation.

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Lack of Medium-Long Term Strategy

Poor planning or the absence of a clear medium and long-term strategy can lead to the imposition of arbitrary delivery dates. Without a clear roadmap aligning product initiatives with business objectives, management may tend to set deadlines based on immediate needs or reactions to competitor moves rather than on a coherent and sustainable strategy. Establishing a vision and a clear direction will help set a common goal that all teams can work towards.

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Lack of Communication

The lack of effective communication between the product team and the business or management areas is perhaps one of the most significant factors. Without open and regular dialogue, it is difficult for parties to understand the limitations, challenges, and work needed to meet expectations. The absence of clear communication leads to assumptions and unilateral decisions, such as imposing delivery dates without considering the operational reality of the product team. But this requires mutual interest from both sides: product must understand business objectives, and business must understand what needs to be done to achieve them. Without empathy on both sides, communication is destined to fail.

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Unexpected Changes in Objectives

Another less common factor, which many business leaders like to lean on to justify some of the previous difficulties, are unexpected changes in objectives due to new market opportunities, changes in investor interests, or legislative updates. These elements can force quick adjustments to deadlines:

• New Opportunities: The need to capture a market opportunity before the competition can accelerate delivery timelines.
• Investor Interests: Changes in investment priorities can suddenly alter planned delivery dates.
• Legislation: New laws may require urgent modifications to the product, impacting deadlines.

As mentioned before, many of these new situations were not really unexpected but simply had not been analyzed, strategized, or, more importantly, shared with the rest of the teams.

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Reflection and Analysis

I invite you to reflect and analyze what is happening in your company. Identifying the reason behind imposed deadlines in your product development is the key step to creating an inflection point and changing the situation.

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Next Steps

In the next article, I will help you address each of these factors and how to tackle imposed deadlines without sacrificing quality, innovation, or, most importantly, your well-being and that of your team.

See you soon!