It's a common issue to see a company's sales team promise new features in order to close a sale. Many times these new features are still in development or are still being designed. Sometimes features are sold before the development team even knows about them.If the customer understands the features are not yet implemented this can help guide the product's design. However, if the sales team promises these features with an uninformed time frame it can put significant amounts of stress on the developers who are charged by management to meet the deadlines. Additionally, sometimes non-existent features are sold to customers as being either completed or near completion when development may not even be aware of the requirements yet (legal/ethical issues notwithstanding).Is there a word or phrase that can be used to describe the uninformed/irresponsible/unethical applications of this practice?It's similar to feature creep, but occurs before development or design.
Is there a name for when a sales team irresponsibly promises non-existent features?
project management;development process;sales;product features;feature creep
Overly optimistic scheduling is the term used by Steve McConnell in his book Rapid Development. He also uses the term wishful thinking.McConnell writes (with supporting evidence) that an overly optimistic schedule actually makes the project later. I had a bad experience with schedule pressure once. A customer was unhappy with a timeline, even though it was in line with similar projects. We hired a contract programmer with the hopes of shortening the timeline. The customer added many more features. (There was no review of hey, the project is taking too long, and now you want more features?) The contract programmer was not as good as we had hoped, and I spent lots of time fixing bugs and design problems.I don't want to live through that experience again as much as I can help it.Yes, you should look for creative ways to help the sales team and management meet their commitments. Sales pay your salary.Yes, you should be politely and firmly speak up about unrealistic schedules. The schedule may not change, but you did what you could. You owe it to your management to give them your best professional opinion, even when it is not what they want to hear. 