In any corporate world three belief systems prevails about software development. In order to become a successful project manager it is important to understand these belief systems up closely.
Belief System #1:
We need these features live by this date.
This belief system is most obnoxious of them all. It poisons the teams in building crap software which is full of bugs. For a project manager it is important to keep the executives away from any such system.
Belief System #2:
We need to release on this date. What features can be completed?
This is not ideal, but is much better than the above one. Over the past years I have seen that It is impossible to move executive team from belief no 1 to 3 without the second one. The move to second belief system is much easy and makes thing much easier for project managers.
Belief system #3:
New features have to be released. How much time it will take?
This is the ideal condition for team and the project manager. The team can present their ideas in accordance to the condition. They can set their own timeline, and can work with peace of mind. For a project manager to move to this belief system it is important to develop a highly trusted environment with the team as well as with the management. This creates the best environment to achieve great results.
If a release date is fixed than it is important for project manager to tell top management team about how deadline is a horizontal line. Everything above it will be completed on the deadline and everything below will be completed on the next release.
It can be quite difficult for project manager to move the belief system from 1 to 2, but once done than moving onto the next step becomes quite easy. This is because the executive would feel the difference in quality of features the team is giving them. One important thing should be considered over here. This system is preferable for 100 plus firms. Other than there is always a legitimate reason behind fixing date.