Why you should not provide a delivery date as a Product Manager?

I always feel like a liar when promising a delivery date for a Product update. After all, everyone is aware of how unlikely this date is! Why is it so difficult and how do you improve your delivery success rate with the team?

Well, let’s start with the “ignorance by choice” issue, Every person who has ever done any Product Management work knows it all runs on many moving elements and tons of unknowns. The development can easily be extended by weeks by any of the following:

• Last minute bugs
• Unexpected dependencies
• Unforeseen technical issues
• Critical issues on the product
• Conflicts while merging code
• Team availability and presence
• Poor, rushed complexity estimations
• Urgent stakeholder change requests
• Lack of time for proper research and prep
• Conflicts on marketing/release scheduele front
• Magical conjunction of planets causing everything to fail

You get what I mean? Knowing all that, I don’t think any Agile Product Manager can promise any date with a clear conscience. Still, your stakeholders will demand dates…