Recently, someone commented in a meeting that we were playing "schedule chicken". I hadn't heard the term before so I looked it up. That's where I found the excellent post Schedule Chicken by Jim Carson which is excerpted below

Schedule Chicken
Given the above setup, it's difficult, if not impossible to accurately estimate project delivery dates. Even when you're brutally honest, spelling out all the things that must occur for you to meet a date, the dependencies get lost in the footnotes in the appendices at the end of the book. Management "pulls in the date" to something ridiculous that they can sell to their bosses. Their bosses do the same. And so on.

Since everyone is using largely fictitious dates as part of a mass delusion, you would think no one expects to make them, no one will make them, no harm. This is sorta true. Each technical lead assumes that the other leads are lying even more about how long it will take them to deliver.

The ruse continues past insignificant milestones until just before something is actually due. The more seasoned managers will delay admitting to the obvious for as long as humanly possible, waiting for someone else (more junior) to "turn" first. The one who does is the "chicken," and is subsequently eviscerated by their boss and made a public example of all the incompetentcies in the universe.

After this "chicken" has been identified, and summarily punished, all the other teams update their schedules with slipped dates that are slightly less than the "chicken's." The process may repeat itself a few times. Key point: You don't want to slip first. Or last.

The question I have for my readers is simple, what do you do once you realize you're a player in a game of schedule chicken?