Project deadline is this weekend, I can make it if I put OT in for the next few days. But not sure if I should. Thoughts?

Did you have a say in the deadline / agree to it, or was it just an arbitrary date set by management?

If you said you would deliver the software by the date, then put in overtime as being true to your word is important.

However, if the deadline was set by clueless management - fuck them, they need to understand that they cant just choose random dates out of thin air

@unsignedint really hit the point. The deadline was raised by management, but I can where where they are coming from: coordinating with other teams, priority from even higher up, etc. I agreed to the time but the work up to now took longer than I expected.

I think I am gonna do some OT, since I agreed to it after all. The lesson would be estimate better next time I guess.

@nicknep007 Good choice. You start to lose credibility if you don't stick to deadlines that you agreed to.

If you discover you really badly mis-estimated and there was no way you could deliver even with overtime - you have to raise that ASAP

@unsignedint good point. In this case I think I can make it, bit just barely. But point taken about communicating the situation!

Explain it to your boss and offer to work overtime to hit the deadline. Then it's their choice if they want to pay you more or not.

Stick to the deadlines is a good thing.

Other thing is to always keep management informed, have a bad estimated delivery time is not just your fault, they have to learn about it and make adjustment next time. Also managing a situation like this from management side is a vital knowledge, they have to aware of the situation.

This is how it works with agile teams.