Right, there are times when you need deadlines and you need to make decisions. Knowing what I know today, I would recommend cutting scope over technical debt, but that's beside the point really.

My problem is where the whole project is managed based on deadlines rather than the flow of work. Deadlines kill productivity, but productivity = efficiency = saving money.

The financial accounting for these things is complex, but considering most projects run late anyway, why even bother with deadline based management?