. I am an engineer and computer programmer. Around here we do not condone tricks like that.
Honesty goes a long way. Just the other day honesty paid off. Steering board took it very calmly when being told that a required change would increase the time to release (and cause missing the deadline). The graph clearly showed the remaining time would double. Steering board members know what logarithmic scales are, don´t they?
Besides as mechanical engineer I´m used to employ safety factors: estimate age and multiply by 2 or 3 to avoid being too low (I do cap at the average life expectancy though)