It’s a «given» in software development – release schedules always slip. Requirements shift, developers underestimate timelines, and quality assurance (QA) finds unexpected defects. Another law of software development is that final release dates are often inflexible. If a market or a holiday shopping season defines your release date you understand how important it is to meet a fixed timeline.
Once you’ve promised a release to the business at the end of the quarter, you are under pressure to deliver software on time and under budget no matter how much your internal timelines have slipped. As a release manager, it is your job to make the best of a challenging situation and to find creative ways to bring a project to an on-time delivery.