Making commitments: Meeting deadlines vs. maximizing throughput

For those of us who build software, being able to make commitments to business stakeholders is hinging on our ability to deliver features fast enough to enable the business to react quickly to new opportunities and changed market conditions.

And yet – in more than two decades in the industry practically every single project I have ever been involved in was optimizing for adherence to schedule (using waterfall, scrum, “Agile”, whatever, it doesn’t matter) instead of optimizing to maximize throughput.

Where is the disconnect? What am I smoking?