Software Journal

Every company has the hard working guy who simply wont commit to a deadline. Every single time the conversation kind of goes like this:

- “Nope, have no idea when I will be done”. (shrugging, shaking his head)
- “A week?”
- “Could be. Can’t really say.”
- “Can it be 3 weeks?”
- “Sure, if I run into some unexpected problem!”
- “So no chance you can be done this week”
- “Again, cant say, if I get lucky, we could be done”

Needless to say, people like this are dreadful to manage. They throw everyone else’s schedule in a spin, and do not allow any planning to happen.

These kinds of people typically fall in two categories:
(i) Have been burnt by being held accountable and do not want to be burnt again
(ii) Do not have any point wise plan, so cannot really estimate how long a task would take

Depending upon which category your guy falls in, you will need to take appropriate route. It is much easier if your problem guy falls in second category: you can just help him develop a plan and have him estimate the smaller pieces. If, your guy is the first category, then you can offer some tech therapy, but results may be rather mixed.