Don't lie.

A task is not done when its code gets checked-in. In production, "done" is:

• Checked-In
• Stable (passes automated tests)
• In-budget (memory and performance)
• Usable (tools, parameters)
• Verified (art-directior or designer or lead programmer)

If you ignore the last four, you're living in a dream. A dream in which you will ship the game. Instead, you'll die under the pressure of crunch time and ship a flawed product that does not match the quality standards it should.

That also means that in production we start with a stable, in-budget product. And that we do have means of verifying that this is true for the entire production (tests).

Yes, it will take twice as much time to finish a task. Yes, it will mean that some tasks can't be declared done until you make more space somewhere else, to fit them in.

Of course you can avoid all this. All it takes, is to lie. 


We are a creative industry. We have to deal with change, we don't plan things up ahead and then waterfall until they are all done (not _most_ of the times at least, there are situations in which that applies).


We don't craft a product by following a plan, we make drawings and sketches (prototypes) and then take a canvas and start painting. 
You don't have a person detailing a finger, another one refining an eye, another working on the nose and then hope that everything will stick together just right. Or hope that you will have all the parts done by a given date! And what if it then misses one of the ears? What do you do, take ten artists working on that ear till midnight every day near the deadline?


Only an idiot would do that, and still many game companies work like that, they don't consider that everything has to fit just right, and that change is not local, every change has to fit with the entire context, every brush stroke has to make a sense in the entire painting.
You start with a painting, a rough one, and then refine it, and at all time the painting is a painting, it's not a collection of unrelated pieces. You can stop at any moment and it will be still a painting, maybe not that refined, maybe not as intricate and detailed as you wanted, but it's a painting.


A game is such only if it runs. If it crashes or goes out of memory on the target platform, it's not a game, it's some binary that crashes. If it does not hold its performance, it's not a game, we can't burn it to a disc and call it a game, it won't be shipped, it won't pass certification. Iteration should not break this quality, it should go from a "shippable" game to a "shippable" game. Especially during production.