How to defend an unpopular schedule [software development projects]

Estimating software product size and software project time and resource needs is hard, but once you have made an estimate, you must still convince your customer or boss to accept it. If the estimated schedule is too long, customers and bosses will pressure you to shorten it-not because your analysis is flawed but simply because they want the software sooner. All too often they succeed and, as a result, many of us find ourselves working on projects that have been planned from the outset to achieve an unattainable combination of cost, schedule and functionality. Such projects are programmed to fail. To help developers become better negotiators, this article describes how to negotiate schedules effectively