zlacker

>>vimes6+(OP)
this seems to mainly be relating to pushing to an arbitrary date for creating something new but still sometimes dates are given to us because of some sort of regulatory reason or a company contract meaning that something needs to be done by a certain time - before anyone says don't make contracts like that: The Danish and Swedish parts of Thomson Reuters WestLaw were sold off to an English holding company, as part of the sale the sold off parts were allowed to remain on WestLaw for one year after which they would have had to pay approx. $165,000 dollars a month.

Obviously we got off of by that arbitrary date, and if we hadn't that would have been a value destroying mistake.

on edit: the weird monetary amount is my attempt to turn to U.S.D the DKK amount at the time which was 1 million dkk - iirc the dollar was at a low but it was between 161 - 165.

>>bryanr+6b
Also government contracts, at least in the US, have to be authorized by an appropriations bill from Congress. A federal agency can't just go to Congress and ask for an unknown amount of money to deliver a capability at an unknown date. Whether it ends up being right or not, and probably it usually isn't, appropriations bills have to be time-bounded and include a maximum dollar amount, and the awarded contract can't go longer or higher no matter what the engineers think it will actually take.