Death March
The Complete Software Developer's Guide to
Surviving "Mission Impossible" Projects
Edward Yourdan, Prentice Hall PTR, 1997,1999
Last Updated: 1st January 2003 Wednesday 23:35, Ankara
This is a very nice book and should be read by (especially) managers. Notes that I took while reading:
- "...you may have noticed that we don't live in an ideal world-and chances are that your project requires you to interact with people who seem anything but rational and whose decisions hardly seem calm or sensible. In other words, you're working on a death match project."
- "...assuming there's no escape-e.g., there are no other jobs available or you've got some form of "golden handcuff" relationship with your employer that strongly discourages you from leaving-the next question is: "How can I survive this project without ruining my health, my sanity, and my dignity?"
- "Ours is not a mature industry. Evey year there's a new Mount Everest to climg and a new crop of hotshot programmers who are convinced that they can run barefoot all the way to the top."
- "A death march project is one for which am unbiased, objective risk assessment (which includes an assessment of technical risks, legal risks, political risks, etc.) determines that the likelihood of failure is > 50 percent."
- "If you think about what goes on in your organization, it's not difficult to understand why death march projects occur. As Scott Adams, author of the incredibly popular "Dilbert" cartoons, points out,
When I first started hearing these stories [about irrational corporate behavior] I was puzzled, but after careful analysis I have developed a sophisticated theory to explain the existence of this bizarre workplace behavior.People are idiots.
Including me. Everyone is an idiot, not just people with low SAT scores. The only difference among us is that we're idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot.[The Dilbert Principle, 1996]"
- Table 1.1 Reasons for death march projects:
- Politics, politics, politics.
- Naive promises made by marketing, senior executives, naive project managers, etc.
- Naive optimism of youth: "We can do it over the weekend!"
- The "start-up" mentality of fledling, enterpreneurial companies.
- The "Marine Corps" mentality: Real programmers don't need sleep.
- Intense competition caused by globalization of markets.
- Intense competition caused by the appearance of new technologies.
- Intense competition caused by unexpected government regulations.
- Unexpected and/or unplanned crises-e.g., your hardware/software vendor just went bankrupt, or your three best programmers just died of Bubonic Plague.
- "...I agree with my college Rick Zahniser that such projects can be an educational experience even if they fail:
I've told you before, I think everyone should be on at least one of these projects. However, there are some other things that you should do at least once:
- Spend a night in jail
- Get commode-hugging drunk
- Raise a boy
- Raise a girl
- Start your own business
- Climb Mount Fuji
