Fuck Deadlines
I’m surrounded by independent designers and programmers so I get to hear a thing or two about client experiences and what is going on behind the scenes of independent design “firms”. One disturbing trend that I noticed this year is that deadlines no longer have any meaning. We set deadlines for our own tasks or clients might ask us of deadlines for their projects and we will provide them, but more and more I am seeing these deadlines not getting met. Whether it is the client’s fault or our own these deadlines come and go faster than startups.
Have we always lived in a world where deadlines have no meaning? Have we become so full of ourselves in this Web 2.0 world that we have created our own celebrity status and feel that we are above such things? I suck the most at meeting my own deadlines and instead of getting angry or frustrated at myself for missing them I simply make excuses. Do you do that with your client work?
Maybe you are at a job and the current client doesn’t fit with how you work because you don’t do deadlines. Deadlines are too restrictive and hinder the creative process right? Missing deadlines is an addicting thing. You miss one and make an excuse and realize it isn’t so bad to miss them so you miss another one and another. Soon you laugh internally at the thought of setting a date for the project to finish or maybe you still convince yourself that this one time you will actually get it done.
It never happens.
Designers and coders expect to get paid what they feel they are worth and when they do are they fulfilling the expectations of the clients that have paid them? We want money yet don’t want to help our clients make that money back by doing stuff when it should be done. If we lose these clients no worries because we have five more potentials sending us emails right? All we need to do is pump out one nice looking website every two months and a couple more clients will trickle in and the ones that were complaining about missed deadlines will disappear and our reputations will go untarnished.
I can’t say if doing bad work ever catches up to you in this new digital world, but if that day ever comes to pass a lot of us our fucked. Till then, fuck deadlines, it can wait till next week.
Scrivs, the problem is not meeting the deadlines themselves, but what causes them not to be met. In most cases, it’s from both client and provider; things slide just a little bit from one side (like the client delivering content for example, or the provider being a few hours late with a proposal and therefore missing a client stakeholder meeting), and very quickly things spiral out of control. The problem is determining who’s fault it mainly was, which as we know is damn near impossible.
As a rule though, always stick to them, even if you have to sacrifice just a little bit of profitability.
Reminds me of a industrial engineering professor saying: “We build good ships here, at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships”.
By Martin on December 12, 2006 8:04 am
I like that quote.
Yeah I know all about client headaches, but I also know now, more so this year than any other in recent history, that clients have learned and have been very cooperative in what they want. For every bad client, there is a good designer with bad work ethic.
By Scrivs on December 12, 2006 8:55 am
Perhaps I a mis-reading you, but it strikes me that the problem here is PM-responsibility. The independents I have done business with that have missed deadlines have generally thought I was managing the project. I generally expected them to.
I think it is incumbent on the designer to establish who is leading the project from day 1. If the client puts the designer in the lead role, then they need to either manage or turn down the work. Management here is going to mean calling the client and babysitting them through getting their piece done too. Price accordingly.
By bex on December 12, 2006 10:17 am
It’s a part of business strategy and experience. Technically, there shouldn’t be out of control clients. Being a good designer, programmer (insert whatever) isn’t good enough.
As a client, I don’t want to hear about the problems with other clients when I’m doing everything that was asked.
I don’t want to hear that my deadline was pushed back without telling me.
I have no patience for less than quality work because of bad time management.
Let’s tell the truth. People push deadlines back because they can get away with it. People take on too much work or miscalculate how much time a project will take. The client is at the mercy of the designer, programmer, whatever because THEY have a deadline. They can’t scrap a project and start all over again.
The bottom line is that there are tons of talented people. Customer service (and that’s what this is) will make a “good designer” the best designer to a client because it is someone they can count on. Someone they can recommend.
When a deadline is made it’s giving someone you’re word. Keep it because in the end, the skills won’t be enough.
By Tyme on December 12, 2006 10:17 am
Estimating is one of the hardest skills to train, but it is one of the most important skill to have. For your own piece of mind, if nothing else. If you can accurately estimate the time it will take you to do the work, then you won’t get into the same crazy work deadline crunches because you can see them coming.
Good read: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html
By engtech on December 12, 2006 11:54 am
Very timely post. I’m going to whip up a post on Project Management today and this ties right in. I’ll likely link it up…
At Blue Flavor we hardly ever miss deadlines. When we do it’s almost always because our client is late on approval or something, usually related to content. When this happens we usually try to make the time up. Some times we can’t, when we can’t we make sure to set expectations to that end.
Missing deadlines happens for various reasons, and is usually not a problem as long as there is a good reason and the expectations are reset.
For me personally I pride myself on always meeting my deadlines and I do my best to hold my co-workers to that as well.
You’re totally right though, clients really do appriceate a designer who’s on time and meets their deadlines.
By Keith on December 12, 2006 12:04 pm
I’ve been the owner of my own web development shop for the past 5 years. I had employees and a great office. The whole time I sucked hard at meeting deadlines. I did come to believe that it was just part of the industry. Then I was recruited by another, larger web design shop with clients like Nike, Burton Snowboards, HP and the like. Missing deadlines in this firm is not allowed. When Nike is releasing a new line of products on the 15th of January world-wide, there’s no excuses for being late. It’s been really great to be immersed in a world where meeting the deadlines are required. My work habits have totally changed and my mind has been reset. It’s also great to be surrounded by a large number of very talented colleagues that add the right mix of social pressure to perform and help you can actually rely on.
By Justin Kistner on December 12, 2006 12:24 pm
I think Justin hits upon a great point. So often, it becomes a he said/she said for missed deadlines. In reality, it is a relationship like any other.
If you allow yourself to miss deadlines, that’s bad. If the client fails to provide negative repercussion for the failure, that’s bad, too. The combination of the two creates a downward spiral.
If the client holds you accountable? Then, the deadlines start to have meaning again. Or you have to start looking for a new job.
When I was on the client side of the desk, my most important task was keeping things on time and meeting deadlines. Now that I’m back on the agency side, I find that one of my most important tasks is keeping things on time and meeting deadlines. ;)
Oy, I’m turning this into a blog post, but there’s one more thing I wanted to say: I am not, by any means, advocating a “making deadlines at any cost” perspective. Impeccable work on deadline is always the result of near-perfect estimation. And that, as engtech mentions, is the true crux of the matter.
Okay. I’ll stop.
By Rick Turoczy on December 12, 2006 1:52 pm
As I got older one big change I noticed was in learning to “push back”. If the deadline isn’t realistic, I complain about it far sooner then I did when I was a noob and I’d assume that whomever was setting the deadline knew that’s how long it took to do it (instead of the reality that the deadline is aligned with factors completely apart from the amount of work to be done).
Usually there’s something that can be negotiated on to make the deadline realistic for the time window… do that up front (because of accurate estimations) and everyone stays happy.
By engtech on December 12, 2006 3:45 pm
I think the reason you live in a world full of missed deadlines is because you’re not in the professional (i.e. interactive firms) web. You’re living in the world of independent contractors who work from home.
I can tell you from experience that this doesn’t happen in the professional world. Deadlines may slip due to late client deliverables, feature creep, etc. But if nothing has changed since the statement of work was formed, we hit that deadline. If you don’t, it’s simply incompetence/laziness on the developers end.
By Kyle on December 12, 2006 5:16 pm
I think it’s more a case of change being initiated from the bottom up. If you’ve ever had to deal with tradesman for example, you’d know what I mean. Need a job done around the house. Tuesday morning can mean Friday afternoon, or 2 Mondays following. I recently had some landscaping work done, the retic people turned up two days early (a miracle..but a pain, I wasn’t ready for them), the people to lay the garden turned up 1 week late, and then we had to wait another couple of days of the crushed granite to be delivered to finish it all off. It’s par for the course in manual labor and trades jobs. Unfortunately it’s creeping upwards into white collar tech and professional work. It sucks if you’re on the receiving end, but if you’re the one doing the work…we’ll it makes life easier in many ways :-)
By Duncan on December 12, 2006 8:34 pm
I try to meet my deadlines at all times. However, I am afraid that my recent risk to my status in Canada will pose a problem that I need to talk to all my clients about.
By Kyle Korleski on December 13, 2006 2:27 am
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
By ~TheAngel~ on December 14, 2006 3:50 am