I recently had a conversation during a planning session where we were discussing the schedule for a product release. As always, there are factions which try to influence when the development should be completed. I say should because there is a release date that needs to be hit certainly, but there are velocity constraints which cannot be changed simply by adding one more developer.

It was at this moment when I shared the famous "You can't make a baby in a month with nine women" analogy. It's a timeless expression that represents the developer's dilemma in such clear fashion. It's also far more communicative than the patented dev quip of "no".

Finding a common language which allows engineering and those groups that they support to communicate is important for a healthy organization.

After a momentary pause, we agreed to adjust the calendar to match the teams predicted velocity.