Schedule chicken is a concept described in

project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...

and

software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...

circles. The condition occurs when two or more parties working towards a common goal all claim to be holding to their original schedules for delivering their part of the work, even after they know those schedules are impossible to meet. Each party hopes the other will be the first to have their failure exposed and thus take all of the blame for the larger project being delayed. This pretense continually moves forward past one project checkpoint to the next, possibly continuing right up until the functionality is actually due. The practice of schedule chicken often results in contagious schedules slips due to the inter team dependencies and is difficult to identify and resolve, as it is in the best interest of each team not to be the first bearer of bad news. The psychological drivers underlining the "Schedule Chicken" behavior are related to the

Hawk-Dove The game of chicken, also known as the hawk–dove game or snowdrift game, is a model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while the ideal outcome is for one player to yield (to avoid the worst outcome if ...

or Snowdrift model of conflict used by players in game theory. The term derives from the game of

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domestication, domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey junglefowl, grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster ...

played between drivers, as depicted in the movie

Rebel Without a Cause ''Rebel Without a Cause'' is a 1955 American coming-of-age drama film about emotionally confused suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that ...

, in which two drivers race their

hot-rod Hot rods are typically American cars that might be old, classic, or modern and that have been rebuilt or modified with large engines optimised for speed and acceleration. One definition is: "a car that's been stripped down, souped up and made ...

s towards a cliff edge. The first driver to jump out of the car is labeled a "

," while the one closest to the edge wins bragging rights.

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Further reading