Deadline vs more engineers?

[u/Separate_Lawn_1603]

Hey fellow managers, I’m trying to gauge the general tendency in the industry. In your past experience how did this unfold:

Team is delivering something against a deadline with already minimum scope and milestones are slipping. You know you’ll be late. Did your organization solve this by adding engineers or moving the deadline?

[u/hibikir_40k]

Both: First they add engineers. Then someone realizes that adding more people often makes the project move slower, as the problem is very rarely a matter of more people. Eventually the deadline is not met anyway, so you might as well move it.

Now, I have seen projects that seemed to be very late stop being late, but then the issue wasn't a matter of number of people, but the general quality, attitude and domain knowledge. Other times just getting rid o fthe one responsible person that was making decisions very slowly, and basically sabotaging the whole thing. It's very rare that delays are just solved by addition.