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Death March
Background Ed Yourdon has a long and storied publishing history, most notably for his books on structured design and his duology (is that a two book series?) Decline and Fall of the American Programmer and The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer. Of course, he's better known recently for his (somewhat apocalyptic) Y2K books. This one, of course, is a couple of years old, but like most of the books I tend to gravitate to, addresses themes that endure. In this case, the desire to do more with less. The Scenario
Death March: [A project] whose "project parameters" exceed the norm by at least 50%. [The metaphor is used to suggest] a "forced march" imposed upon relatively innocent victims, the outcome of which is usually a high casualty rate. (2)Yourdon's definition, as related above, does not necessarily imply a long-term project (although long-term death marches are worse than short-term ones), but instead describes a project with a low rate of success and a high personal impact. The project is either underfunded, underscheduled, understaffed, overfeatured, or some combination of the above. The introduction deals with the reasons DM projects happen, and why people actually agree to work on them. Having been on one myself, I can say that "ego" is one of the major reasons.
The subsequent chapters deal with various facets of the death march project, and how those facets are unique in such a project. Chapter 2, politics, has an especially interesting section on identifying what type of DM project one is on, and the chances of success for such a project. Yourdon rates projects on a four-quadrant scale: low and high likelihood of success, and low and high happiness factor (giving four combinations). Suffice to say, there are good combinations, bad combinations, and worse combinations. :-)
Chapter 3 deals with an important part of any project, but one that is hypercritical for any death march project: negotiation. Needless to say, good negotiation can turn a DM project into an almost-normal project, while bad negotiation can turn a bad situation into a nightmare. Yourdon provides some excellent tips on how to deal with upper management in these situations, which should be useful even if you've negotiated for a standard project before. Clearly, management is going to be much less forgiving in a DM situation.
Chapter 4 deals with "peopleware" issues in death march projects. As with negotiation, nothing really changes from a standard project to a DM project, but everything is emphasized. If you have poor workspace when you're on a normal deadline, consider how that workspace will affect you when you're under extreme time pressure. Overtime, and the limits of such, are another important issue Yourdon deals with.
Chapter 5 deals with an issue I've addressed many times in my reviews: process. I greatly appreciate Yourdon's take on process in a DM project. Simply put, while the Methodology Police will make any DM project worse, the lack of process will completely destroy one. Don't try to do all the paperwork while you're cramming to get the software out the door, but abandoning process will insure your failure. Things like requirements management and configuration management are all the more critical on a likely-to-fail project. If you lose only a week to a requirements change, that might be a quarter of your schedule!
Chapter 6, tools, simply reminds us that technology will not solve the human problem of programming. No CASE tool or supercompiler is going to come along to write your DM software for you. Use what you are most comfortable with, and you'll be the most productive.
The concluding chapter 7 proposes an interesting scenario: what if death march projects were to become normal? That is, how do you live and work rationally in an environment that is irrational? Suffice to say, this impacts everything about a software team, including the people who are hired and how careers advance within the company.
Throughout the book, Yourdon includes some excellent footnotes taken from correspondence with various software practitioners. These email excepts, gleaned from a questionnaire Yourdon sent out about the book's subject, give excellent insight into the nature of a death march project.
Although few people actually want to be sucked into a death march project, it will likely happen to most developers at some point in time or another. Being prepared for the occurrence might well mean your survival of such a project.
What's Bad/Good I found very little to dislike about this book. The text is concise yet thorough. The presentation is excellent. The ideas are reasonable and well-stated. I find Yourdon to be quite moderate in his position, neither justifying death marches nor railing against them overly. The advice on this book could easily be applied to any sort of project, and in fact is fairly standard in the literature, only ramped up for an intense, death march experience. Very little has changed in the industry since this book was initially published, and I doubt its timeliness will cease anytime soon. So What's In It For Me? If you write software, or work on any knowledge team, you will likely face a death march project at some point in your career. This book will help prepare you to deal with, and triumph over, such an experience. Table of Contents Preface- Introduction
- Politics
- Negotiations
- People in Death March Projects
- Processes
- Tools and Technology
- Death March as a Way of Life
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On some projects, the only thing that kept me coming back every Monday was the paycheck at the end of the week. That, and naive hope that eventually somebody would clue in and let us do our jobs in a meaningful way. A death march project is one that is being sabotaged by management in such a way that no amount of developer effort, passion, or enthusiasm will save it. The only thing that will save it is a dramatic change in management's understanding of the project's goals.
I don't know many programmers that are only in it for the money. The ones that are, I don't trust. As for the rest of us, yes, the rarity of our skills allows us to garner huge paychecks, but we're in it for the programming.
Give a sculptor a hundred bucks and a bucket of clay to work with and he'll be happy; give him a thousand bucks and a bucket of moist shit, and he'll usually walk. In analogous circumstances, most self-respecting programmers will, too.
So if you give me a project that's doomed, don't accuse me of cynicism when I act like I know it. And if you think the troops are responsible for their own low morale, your project's collapse is inevitable.
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This is not my sandwich.
Stay tuned for The Fluctuation of The American Programmer to round out the trilogy.
And of course, don't forget the fourth book in the trilogy: So Long and Thanks for all the Mountain Dew.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yes, but can it tell us how to deal with the most impossible dadline of them all:
"What the hell did you do to the car?!"
Obliteracy: Words with explosions