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Task due dates are a waste of time

Posted by Andy Singleton on Sat, Oct 06, 2007 @ 08:06 PM
 
Traditional project management systems put expected completion dates on each task.  Interestingly, systems to support agile development, such as Trac our our internal task and ticket systems, do not put dates on tasks.
Why is it bad to put due dates on tasks?  It creates a lot unproductive work for the project manager.  When you actually do the work, you almost always do things in a different order than you expect.  So, if you want to make your plan accurate, you have to edit the due dates.  Changing one due date changes all the other due dates that are after the task you are editing.  Editing due dates, over and over again, is a waste of time.

The difference between agile project management and traditional project management is that agile admits the reality - priorities change, and dates change.  So, no dates at the task level.

 It is much easier to assign a priority to the ticket, and then work on the tickets in priority order.  If you change the priority on one ticket, or if takes longer than you expect, none of the other ticket priorities need to change

If you need due dates or expected completion dates, you can apply them to milestones – batches of high-priority tickets - and change everything at one time.

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COMMENTS

I'm a nurse and nurses call it triage... nurses dynamically alter the priority of tasks depending on what needs to come first, not bc someone made it so. Now that I'm working w/ health care IT, the same rule applies and works well. I don't use project management software and instead turn to GTD or other agile tools, but not those flow charts w/ dates.

posted @ Sunday, October 07, 2007 12:19 PM by Dave


Andy, I could hardly agree with what you have to say. Ultimately task is a breakdown of a bigger activity. If all you put down a task in to the project plan, it means that its a sizeable activity with atleast a day's work. Like how small rain drops form a river which in turn forms a flood, all these small task if missed doing on time would significantly affect the overall deadline. My concept of being agile is that.. you need to accept that things could not be done within the due date, so lets go ahead and plan it for a better date after doing some root-cause-analysis as to why we slipped the deadline. For me, being agile doesn't mean that I never set deadlines. By the way, it was nice reading your blog as it gave me a different perspective about project management without due dates.

posted @ Sunday, October 07, 2007 1:07 PM by Mohasin


putting tasks on due dates means you believe you can predict the future. priorities change, people get sick, scope changes... basically, Life Happens. there's no point wasting time trying to predict the future, because no matter how hard you'll try, you'll never be correct (esp. in software development). focus on the present now, and the future later. it'll make you and your team happier and more productive.

posted @ Sunday, October 07, 2007 2:24 PM by kareem


Mohasin, I don't think a task has to be a sizeable activity with at least a day's work. I use tasks and tickets to describe work accurately to my co-workers. If the task needs to be described, then I write it down, even if it will only take 10 minutes to do. It's an artifact for collaborating and actually getting the work done, rather than for estimating, a far less important activity. And, I don't see why a missing the date on a task necessarily means that you are behind schedule. Maybe it means that you did some more important tasks first. I do agree that you need deadlines. However, the deadlines are assigned to big batches of tasks (releases or milestones), and what goes into the batch will vary.

posted @ Tuesday, October 09, 2007 11:23 PM by


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