Schedule Chicken

I came across this article in the MSDN Library, written in April 1999 concerning Microsoft's latest reorganization. What particularly caught my attention was this phenomenon dubbed "Schedule Chicken" after that famous scene in Rebel Without a Cause in which one unfortunate lad goes careening over a cliff during a game of chicken when his coat hangs on the car door. From the article:

The software project equivalence happens when two or more areas of a product claim they can deliver their features at a ridiculously early date because each assumes the other feature area team is lying even worse about how long it will take them to deliver their features. This charade marches forward past one psychedelic checkpoint after another until just before the goods are actually due. A more seasoned team lead will delay copping to what is painfully obvious for as long as humanly possible, hoping someone else will break first and jump out of their car. The ceremony where the team lead has to admit the emperor isn't wearing any clothes results in a tribal ritual that rivals Inca sacrifices, except that the virgin probably felt better about her fate. It is very difficult for the offending feature team to recover from being the furthest out on the schedule—because now that the truth is known, all everyone else has to do to look good is to finish just before that late team. Even if the schedule chickens end up beating the deadline, it is nearly impossible for the people on that team to beat the stigma of being unable to stay on a schedule.

Prior to this reorg, Steve Ballmer apparently spent some time studying company culture, and decided this and several other such practices had to go. For instance:

Distinctively unique ideas are no longer killed simply because they are distinctively unique. Specifically, "If this is such a big problem, how come you are the only one who has ever thought of it?" is no longer a valid reason to kill a feature or product.

Distinctively stupid ideas, unique or otherwise, are shot on sight by the newly created Stupidity Discipline Task Force, whose main mission is to walk around campus with rolled up back issues of Dr. Dobbs ready, able and willing to use them on the noses of program managers.

Whoever thought browsing the MSDN Library could be so, er, educational?