> I think it is this mindset of acknowledging that one /will/ run into
> problems, both self-made and external, and that time /must/ be reserved
> for such events accordingly, that is crucial for good project management.

Indeed. We have quite a good project management tool, that essentially 
takes out any "safety buffer" from individual tasks and makes it one big 
lump at the end. That way individual tasks can over-run or under-run, 
but the idea being on average it will be some pre-determined figure.

The problem is, once this is done in a realistic way and agreed by all 
actually doing the work, project management types come along and say the 
end date is too far away and make it sooner. So you end up spending the 
whole project with the engineers assuming they will miss the end date 
from the start and not really caring about it, and the project manager 
frantically trying to fiddle things around and cut corners to meet the 
date they agreed to. In the end everyone is shafted for "missing the 
deadline", as senior management types seem unaware of the cries from the 
engineers since the beginning of the project.

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