Meeting Deadlines

Another busy month came to an end and we successfully met several deadlines on a project that I am involved at WSO2. I have a good career record working with teams that meat deadlines. Meeting deadlines is paramount for customer projects, and skipping one interim deadline will heavily effect the final deadline and the overall success of the project.
To meet a deadline, the entire team need to understand the scope and deliverables. Team should understand the customer, because people pay to get what they want, so when a customer asks for a rabbit we should deliver a rabbit and not a bird.
Iterations is one key element of a on-time project.
More than any thing, the team (people) is the key. I always find three set of people in project teams.
The first set is committed, energetic, enthusiastic and goal-oriented. They communicate well, have a good understanding on overall project scope and work as a team. It is easy to work with people on this category and can always meet any difficult deadlines.
Second set are not team players but committed on their areas, not much communication, don't have an overall idea of project scope, but well-versed in their areas and deliver those on time. Still with a group like that, we can meet deadlines, only additional coordination and additional planing is needed.
Third set is LAZY, do not communicate (deaf, mute, blind), just pass the ball around, not deliver on time, not sit in the team and does not have a clue on what is going on. These groups are the bottlenecks to meet deadlines. My strategy to overcome the negative effects of the last group is to distribute their work among the good folks or keep it in my bucket and deliver. But don't give them credit by hiding their laziness.
I always follow F1 teams because they always meet deadlines to win races.