I once tried to ship a product and nobody else was ready. Marketing assumed the product would be late and wasn't geared up to market it. The CEO couldn't point to a marketing campaign so didn't want to mention it at the conference. Support hadn't bothered to ramp up on it since marketing had told them it wasn't actually going to ship until next quarter.

It's not about "pleasing upper management" is about understanding that a product isn't "shipping" just because you can launch it the software. The entire company needs to be on board.