Real Situation: you are the project manager for a small company, you have one senior developer and one junior developer. You have a big client (accounting for about 50% of company sales) breathing down your neck. The client wants you to deliver a project that your senior developer promised would be delivered over a month ago (side note: the client provided new requirements after this deadline was given but has refused to give you more than one extra week).
The client has two projects in the pipeline with you and desperately wants to see results on the first project. The first project is 95% complete and only requires mundane details to be completed. When these requirements are met it is likely more requirements will be given. The second project is barely started. You are getting worried that you will lose the client and/or second project if the first project is not delivered soon.
Your senior developer considers the changes remaining on the first project has no value left and so he does not want to work on the first project. He wants to move onto the second project as all the interesting / high value work on the first project is done.
The junior web developer is attending to simpler, but higher priority projects, and cannot begin work on the first project for at least another day if not two. When the junior developer can begin work on the first project he will take vastly longer to complete the tasks than the senior developer (likey 3 days instead of three hours).
If you give it to the senior programmer he cannot work on high value work for the second project, but if you give it to the junior programmer you unnecessarily continue to delay the delivery of the first project and further upset the client.
How would you handle this situation?