If the primary issue is to "make the date", and in my experience it usually is, then whoever has that responsibility needs to have the authority to apply people and resources, and to set the detailed objectives and goals. Unless we plan to give our developers the authority to hire and fire, to buy computers, to bring in contractors, we'd better not imagine that they can be responsible for the date. Unless we plan to give our developers the authority to decide which features will be delivered on the date and which ones will be deferred until later, we'd better not suppose that they can be responsible for the date. They can't: they don't have enough authority to steer.
To deliver the best possible combination of features by a given date, there must be control over the resources, and over the feature list. There's no way out of this. If you go to the store with a huge shopping list and twenty dollars, you need the authority to go to the money machine for more cash, or the authority to make changes to the list. And shopping is a lot easier than software development.
Making the date requires managing resources and scope. Those are business functions, not development functions. What's to do?
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