Programming for the two big I’s (6) - The milestones I had to meet:

(This is the sixth installment of a story that started here.
The previous episode is here.)
We were starting too late to meet the project's milestones. Each milestone required certain functionality to be complete. We agreed that at best I could write enough software to make it look like we were on schedule. I very frankly described the next three milestones like this (to everyone, including the people who would verify them):

• Fool our group manager into thinking that the first part of the software was working
  
• Fool our director into thinking that more of the software was working
  
• Fool representatives of the two Big I companies into thinking that most of the software was working.
  

If I wrote fast enough, I would buy a little time for the last milestone: release the real working software. We were not going to try to fool the customers.