Well said! I'm immediately reminded of the paradox of the 4th down punt in American Football. Put simply, head coaches choose to punt far more often than they statistically should; but, they do so anyway because it ensures they won't take the blame for the "unorthodox" decision.
In this case, it's management giving the impression that they are "doing something." We see the same thing with, "can we add more developers to speed this up?" The answer is almost universally "no" and, presumably, any manager in the modern era should have read (or at least be familiar with) the over 40 year-old book, "The Mythical Man Month." But, from a senior management position, there aren't many levers to pull--and when the heat is on, they have to be seen to "do something."
One interesting source on the topic (there are many others):
Speaking to senior management about being "seen" doing something here. Maybe you should pull up your bootstraps and ask your team what they need, use your authority to knock down any blockers the team identifies, listen to them, work with them in the trenches, and in a way become their slave, ready to move on anything they ask of you. But hey, that's just what I'd do in the situation and be danmed if someone tried to tell me I wasn't doing something.
I don't know how much that would help. If senior management were capable of contributing at this level, they'd be an architect or product owner. They're not, so they cannot help.
A certain design and a certain set of requirements is what defines the time table. You can influence it to a very small degree by adding more people, but that's it. Nothing anybody can do will make it faster, unless they propose a better more efficient design or way of doing it. Or reduce the requirements.
In this case, it's management giving the impression that they are "doing something." We see the same thing with, "can we add more developers to speed this up?" The answer is almost universally "no" and, presumably, any manager in the modern era should have read (or at least be familiar with) the over 40 year-old book, "The Mythical Man Month." But, from a senior management position, there aren't many levers to pull--and when the heat is on, they have to be seen to "do something."
One interesting source on the topic (there are many others):
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/upshot/4th-down-when-to-g...