Usually it is a result of unrealistic or overly optimistic expectations in scheduling, feature scope, or both, and often includes lack of appropriate documentation, or any sort of relevant training. The knowledge of the doomed nature of the project weighs heavily on the psyche of its participants, as if they are helplessly watching the team as it marches into the sea. Often, the death march will involve desperate attempts to right the course of the project by asking team members to work especially grueling hours, weekends (sometimes with a straight face), or by attempting to "throw (enough) bodies at the problem" with varying results, often causing burnout.
Death march projects are becoming increasingly common in the software industry. The symptoms are obvious: The project schedule, budget, and staff are about half of what is necessary for completion. The planned feature set is unrealistic. People are working 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, and stress is taking its toll. The project has a high risk of failure, yet management is either blind to the situation or has no alternative. Why do these irrational projects happen, and what, other than pure idiocy, leads people to get involved in them?
If you want to avoid a death march, you should prepare a study to cover the entire project lifecycle, systematically addressing every key issue participants face: politics, people, process, project management, and tools. No matter what your role--developer, project leader, line-of-business manager, or CxO--you'll find realistic, usable solutions. This edition's new and updated coverage includes:
- Creating Mission Impossible projects out of DM projects
- Negotiating your project's conditions: making the best of a bad situation
- XP, agile methods, and death march projects
- Time management for teams: eliminating distractions that can derail your project
- "Critical chain scheduling": identifying and eliminating organizational dysfunction
- Predicting the "straw that breaks the camel's back": lessons from system dynamics
- Choosing tools and methodologies most likely to work in your environment
- Project "flight simulators": war gaming your next project
- Applying triage to deliver the features that matter most
- When it's time to walk away
For more information about death march, and you want a practical advice to help you survive, everything from negotiating with upper management to breathing life into faltering projects and need help to determine if you should look for another job, I strongly advice you to read this book for author Ed Yourdon. To see the Table Of Contents clich here.
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