By New Year's Eve, we'll have fixed it: the future perfect and continuous for deadlines
About this lesson
Deadlines call for the future perfect and future continuous, which this B2 English for IT lesson plan teaches for plans and status updates.
- Grammar
- The future continuous for work in progress at a future moment, the future perfect for work done by then (will have emailed), and by, until and by the time.
- Topic
- A migration with a cut-off nobody can move at Kestrel Cloud, a fictional payments startup, with words such as a code freeze, a fallback and on standby.
- Activities
- The story of the Y2K bug, a migration plan, a call about the cut-over, self-checking drills, a chat, open boxes, and a timeline update to write and record.
What's inside
Chapter 1Warm-up: Racing the Clock
Chapter 2The Story: The Deadline Nobody Could Move
Chapter 3At Work: The Switch-off Plan
Chapter 4Listen: The Cut-over Weekend
Chapter 5Grammar: Still Happening or Already Done?
- Study the scheme: future continuous and future perfectGrammar schemeTry it
- Choose the correct option: still happening or already done?Choose the optionUnlock
- Fill in the table with both future formsFill in the tableTry it
- Choose by, until or by the timeChoose the optionUnlock
- Fill in the gaps in Kenji's update with the future continuous or the future perfectFill in the gapsUnlock
- Complete the second sentence so it means the same as the firstFill in the gapsUnlock
Chapter 6Speak Up: Report on a Deadline
Chapter 7Homework: Your Timeline Update
Vocabulary
12 words and phrases from the lesson, each with a picture and audio in edio.
+9 more with pictures and audio in the lessonMore words
- a fallback
- a cut-off date
- a code freeze
- a maintenance window
- ahead of schedule
- on standby
- deprecate
- switch off
- fall behind
Grammar: future continuous and future perfect
Status updates need two views of the same future moment: is the work still happening then, or already done? In a plan to switch off an old endpoint before a fixed date, learners pick the future continuous or the future perfect for each step, then choose between by, until and by the time.
Future continuous and future perfect
Picture a moment in the future. Is the action still happening then, or is it already done?
One moment, two views
Picture one future moment. Will be + -ing says the work is still in progress then: At 7:00, Diego will be moving traffic. Will have + past participle says it will be complete by that moment: By June 2, support will have emailed every merchant.
- a future moment: at 7:00, by June 30
- will be + -ing: still happening then
- will have + past participle: done by then
Negatives and questions
The negatives are won't be + -ing and won't have + participle: By June 30, we won't have moved every merchant. A question opens with will: Will you be watching the delivery rate? Will the team have shipped the fix by Friday?
| Form | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| will be + -ing | in progress at a future time | At 7:00, Diego will be moving traffic. |
| will have + past participle | finished before a future time | By June 2, support will have emailed every merchant. |
| won't be + -ing | not in progress at that time | During the window, we won't be releasing anything else. |
| won't have + past participle | not finished by that time | By June 30, we won't have moved every merchant. |
| Will … be + -ing? | asking about a future moment | Will you be watching the delivery rate? |
| Will … have + past participle? | asking if something will be done | Will the team have shipped the fix by Friday? |
By, until or by the time?
By means no later than and often pairs with the future perfect: By Friday, we'll have shipped the fix. Until covers all the time up to a point: The old endpoint will keep working until June 30. After by the time, the verb stays in the present simple.
| Time words | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| at 7:00, this time next week, on Sunday morning | a moment: often will be + -ing | This time next week, we'll be testing on staging. |
| by + time | no later than: often will have + past participle | By Friday, we'll have shipped the fix. |
| until + time | all the time up to then | The old endpoint will keep working until June 30. |
| by the time + present simple | before another future event | By the time the provider switches off its API, most merchants will have updated. |
| by then | before the moment you just named | The window closes at 9:00. By then, all traffic will have moved. |
Will finish or will have finished?
Both can be right with by. We'll finish the dry run by June 16 is a plain promise; By June 16, we'll have finished the dry run stands on that date and looks back at completed work. The examples come from the migration plan and the call.
will finish or will have finished?
Both can be correct with by. “We'll finish the dry run by June 16” is a simple promise about the deadline. “By June 16, we'll have finished the dry run” imagines June 16 and looks back: the work is already complete then. In plans and status updates, the future perfect makes this very clear.
From the plan and the call
- From June 9, older versions will be showing a full-screen message.in progress over a future period
- And while I'm moving it, you'll be sleeping in San Francisco.two actions in progress at the same time
- By the time we get to the real weekend, we'll have switched the old endpoint off.done before the weekend
- We won't have moved everyone. Some merchants don't open the app for weeks.not finished by the cut-off
- Support will be calling them the week after the cut-off.in progress during a future week
Typical mistakes
By the time we will launch, every merchant will have updated.
By the time we launch, every merchant will have updated.
present simple after by the time, when, before and until
At 7:00, we will be test the app on real phones.
At 7:00, we will be testing the app on real phones.
will be + -ing
By Friday, the new build will have be on staging for a week.
By Friday, the new build will have been on staging for a week.
will have + past participle: been, not be
We'll have moved every merchant until June 30.
We'll have moved every merchant by June 30.
a deadline takes by; until is for something that continues
More lessons on this grammar: Future tenses lessons and exercises
Try the future perfect exercises
Try them yourself: these are the same exercises your students do in edio.
What's in the lesson
- 13 auto-checked exercises
- 2 games
- 2 teacher-checked tasks
- 1 real-life document
- 2 articles
- 1 grammar scheme
- 1 set of word cards
- 1 audio clip
- 1 picture
- 1 transcript
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- say what will be happening at a moment in the future: At 7:00, Diego will be moving traffic.
- say what will and won't be done by a deadline: By June 2, support will have emailed every merchant. We won't have moved everyone.
- choose by, until or by the time, with the present simple after by the time: By the time we launch, every merchant will have updated.
- report progress on a hard deadline to a product owner, with a fallback instead of a promise: We're slightly ahead of schedule.
Lesson 2 of English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code continues Planning and estimates, the unit on estimating work and agreeing on a realistic plan. After the ranges of lesson 1, it turns to deadlines, building on will for predictions from A2.2 lesson 13; lesson 3 closes the unit with likelihood and planning poker. With a date that can't move, a plan must say what will be done by when.
A wheel of questions about learners' own deadlines opens the lesson, then twelve words with pictures and audio, from a legacy system to fall behind, and a picture quiz. The story explains why two-digit years sent the world racing to fix software before 2000. At work, learners check a migration plan and sort its steps into still happening or already done, then hear two engineers plan the cut-over weekend in an AI-voiced call.
Five drills that check themselves come after the scheme, among them a table that pairs both forms for each verb and a tech lead's update with gaps. In the chat, learners brief a product owner before a meeting, and open boxes ask what they will be doing next week and what they will have finished by a deadline.
The homework gathers deadline language in a phrase bank; a quiz on the forms and a match of sentence halves check themselves. Learners write a timeline update for a real deadline and record a voice update about the end of the quarter; the teacher reviews both.
- Grammar:
- future continuous · future perfect · by / until / by the time
- Topic:
- deadlines · migration plans · Y2K
Teaching tips
- Put the scheme's timeline on the board: mark Sunday at 7:00 with a dot and the maintenance window with a bar, then ask which actions cross the dot and which end before it.
- Quiz pairs on the migration plan's dates: one asks What will have happened by June 2? or What will be happening from June 9?, and the partner answers from the timeline without looking.
- Play the call with a clock for each city: at six Chicago time, four in San Francisco, learners note who will be moving traffic, who will be sleeping and who will be on standby in New York.
- One-to-one, play the product owner: push for a yes on a hard deadline, and have the learner answer with won't have finished, a fallback and a contingency plan instead of a promise.
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The whole course: English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code
24 lessons at B2 for software teams, in American English. A year on at Kestrel Cloud, a fictional payments startup, Iryna and her team estimate work, write docs and postmortems, argue trade-offs, give demos and negotiate scope. Each lesson starts from a real case, from the Apollo 11 alarms to Conway's law.See the course
Unit 1 Planning and estimates
estimates and deadlines: approximating numbers, the future continuous and perfect, likelihood
Lesson 1It always takes longerApproximating numbers in estimates
Lesson 2 · you're hereBy New Year's Eve, we'll have fixed itFuture continuous and future perfect
Lesson 3Let's play planning pokerLikelihood with bound to, likely to and may well
Unit 2 Docs people read
specs and design docs: modals for requirements, participle clauses, plain English
Unit 3 Incidents and postmortems
telling an incident without blame: narrative tenses, the passive, the third conditional
Unit 4 Architecture and trade-offs
comparing options and recording decisions: contrast linkers, modals of deduction, mixed conditionals
Unit 5 Demos and tech talks
a clear structure on stage: signposting, cleft sentences, describing trends
Unit 6 Stakeholders and scope
saying no and finding yes: diplomatic language, as long as and unless, negotiating
Unit 7 AI, security and ethics
AI tools, passwords and team rules: be used to and get used to, past modals of deduction, purpose linkers
Unit 8 Growing your career
feedback, retros and goals: phrasal verbs, reporting verbs, wish and if only
