“Impossible!” is probably your first response to the above title. And honestly, I’d be inclined to agree. As a developer, quoting deadlines to customers / management is a minefield at the best of times, and it doesn’t help matters much when you have to explain the reasoning behind your suggested date to someone who doesn’t really understand what it is you do in the first place.

If it’s longer than they expected (isn’t it always?), responses from these people generally range from exasperation to sheer incredulity, the classic response being “What, how on _earth_ can such a simple request take so long?!”.

There isn’t any answer you can give these people that will satisfy them, and in fact from experience the worst thing you can do (apart from agreeing to shorten the time required) is to try and explain exactly what is required to complete said ’simple’ task, because as soon as you mention anything remotely technical they’ll just switch off (the classic ‘buffer overflow’ syndrome).

As for having to extend a deadline, and the resulting conversation as to why this is necessary, is something I have nightmares about. Honestly, this is a total lose-lose situation as there isn’t any possible outcome that will make you feel happy about your work. You usually end up spending more time explaining what you’re doing to clueless management than you do actually performing what it is you’re supposed to be working on in the first place.

There isn’t a conclusion to this rant, I just felt the need to vent - but of course, if you think you have a foolproof way of handling these type of situations then feel free to comment :)