Death March

by Edward Yourdon

Book Overview

In the course of a career, practically every software developer will encounter several projects with outrageous staffing, schedule, budget or feature constraints--projects that seem "doomed to fail".... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 013143635X
• ISBN13: 9780131436350
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Software development is a defective industry

Death March does a great job of explaining what is wrong with the software development industry--and the problems are pervasive and horrible. I have been involved in plenty of disasters myself (everybody has), and I got a crick in my neck from wagging my head up and down as I read. Perhaps the most therapeutic part of the book is finding out that you are not the only one, and the grass is probably brown across the fence at the next company, too. I loved the Napoleon quote: "It follows that any commander in chief that undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reason, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall." Great advice unless there are no alternatives and the Barbarians are storming the gates. Yourdon does review the options for a team lead faced with no-win situations, and the book is useful for helping you think clearly and cast a wide net for solutions when you feel despondent and desperate. The oft-reiterated advice to quit is something I have done in the most egregious situations, and there is nothing like the feeling of relief when you walk out of a pressure-cooker for the last time. But realistically, you have to pay your bills. What I can advise is to read this book to understand the sickness, and then do the best you can to change the industry. The problems are endemic, but plenty of other professions have reached a point where they can realiably estimate projects and complete them successfully (e.g. construction and building trades, manufacturing, even military planning). Of course, you may want to move up in management, but then you might become part of the problem. This book could help you gain some vision for leading a successful IT organization. Arm yourself with knowledge and start a crusade as an enlightened IT leader!

A New Classic for Business and IT!

Edward Yourdon begins with a definition of a "death march" as any project where the schedule has been arbitrarily compressed by half, the budget has been reduced by 50% or more, the requirements of the project are more than 50% of what can be reasonably expected, or for whatever reason, the risk of project failure is greater than 50%. Given the likelihood of a permanently high-pressure, intensely competitive business environment, death-march projects will remain the norm in the IT industry, and they will continue to appear practically everywhere in business in the future.The first edition of Death March was for me, as most in the IT industry, gratifying for its dead-on assessment of the realities of IT projects in today's economy. The title is unforgettable, sadly accurate, and particularly resonant in today's increasingly frenetic business environment. The original edition was primarily a diagnosis of the zeitgeist of the IT industry, yet it didn't propose enough solutions for the unfortunates caught in death-march projects. The new, somewhat longer second edition, offers practical solutions for dealing with death marches and the major concerns of potential readers, i.e., what can I do tomorrow? The second edition includes advice on negotiation and estimation, as well as techniques for time management and controlling interruptions.This is a short and disturbing book-usefully short, because if you really need to read the book, you probably don't have time to read it. But for anyone involved with project or technical management, it is a must-read. And it's not a bad idea for the marketing and sales people who sometime spawn death marches to give it a look, too. With the second edition, Mr. Yourdon has created an enduring work for the IT industry and the general business reader as well, a new classic that I keep on the shelf next to Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month.

An excellent survival guide

If you've been in IT for any length of time, you have undoubtedly experienced what Yourdon calls a "death march" project. These are projects that are underfunded, understaffed, or have deadlines that are unrealistic by a factor of 2x or more. You're expected to sacrifice your life and health for an extended period of time to complete an impossible task. And what's worse, this type of project is becoming all too common in today's business. The book "Death March", while it's unable to stop these projects, can help you survive and manage them.Yourdon examines the reasons behind why companies run projects in this fashion, as well as some of the surrounding issues that can complicate an already impossible situation. For instance, you may have a tight deadline, but the "Policy Police" expect all the required paperwork to be filled out for each deliverable. Or even more common, you have decisions that need to be made by the customer, but the customer delays making those choices by days or weeks, thereby pushing the schedule off track even further. By understanding these situations, you can devise ways to work around them or to manage expectations so that you don't get saddled with all the blame for missed deadlines in the end.Both managers and developers will find useful material in this book. It is slanted a bit more towards the management side, but it's useful for both parties to know and understand the external pressures that are affecting the outcome of their project. ConclusionIf you are working on a death march project (or work for a company where they are all too common), this book can give you some practical ways to deal with the issues that cause them. The projects will not go away, but you will at least have a chance to survive them without losing your sanity.

Essential item for your death-march survival pack

Death March projects seem to be the norm in the software industry. This book explain about how "death march projects" comes about, and how to survive it. While reading this book, I always found the examples given so realistic that I wished that I have read the book before I have graduate from University.Within it, you can also see software project management tips littered throughout the book. They are often found in project management books, but somehow they never got registered in our brains. For example, it talks about "triage". Putting it into simpler teams, it means classifying the features to build into must-do, should-do and could-do. This concept of "scope" have been widely been discussed, but people failed to put them into practice.This is an informative book to understand about "Death Marches". Understanding is the first step into winning the war of "Death March Projects".This is definitely a book that is worth you spending your bucks on.

Look at the philosophy, not the technology.

Having managed several death march projects before I had even heard of this book, and now being involved in the mother of them all, there is a certain grim satisfaction in recognising one's situation in the title of a book. This is a book for project managers who are faced with the impossible. It prescribes no magic formulae, but assists the often stressed and over-worked PM's brain to calmly consider the symptoms of the current environment and even to admit a laugh or two about the absurdity of it all.As a project manager who has worked mostly in the web environment, I can safely say that the majority of web projects are death march projects - it all depends on the organisation whether they're Mission Impossible or Ugly. Much food for thought for web development projects, in my opinion, and the principles do not date at all.