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Death March [Paperback]

Edward Yourdon (Author)

3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (60 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (Nov 16 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 013143635X
ISBN-13: 978-0131436350
Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 17.7 x 1.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 408 g

Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (60 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #168,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

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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?

Edward Yourdon has produced a wise and highly readable book on the entire death march phenomenon and the best way to steer through one. He takes a close look at the types of projects that often become death marches and the corporate politics and culture that typically produce them; Yourdon helps you examine your own motivations and those of corporate managers who enable death marches to take shape.

Much of Death March is about the human element of highly stressful projects. The author's plain-spoken observations on the dysfunctional organization--the Machiavellian politics, naive optimism, lust for power, fear, and sheer managerial stupidity that guide so many death marches--make for a refreshing change from other project management books. You'll also find much practical advice to help you survive, everything from negotiating with upper management to breathing life into faltering projects. He'll even help you determine if you should look for another job.

If you've ever worked in a death march situation or been a client of a company addicted to death march management, this book will help you understand what happened. More importantly, it will help you prepare for future encounters with death marches. Death March is highly recommended for anyone involved in software development. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

Historically, all software projects have involved a certain degree of risk and pressure -- but many of the projects in today's chaotic business environment involve such intense pressure that they are referred to colloquially as "death-march" projects -- i.e., projects whose schedules are so compressed, and/or whose budgets, or resource (people) assignments are so constrained, that the only "obvious" way to succeed is for the entire team to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations until the project is finished. While the corporate goal of such projects is to overcome impossible odds and achieve miracles, the personal goal of the project manager and team members often shrinks down to mere survival: keeping one's job, maintaining some semblance of a relationship with one's spouse and children, and avoiding a heart attack or ulcer. This new and thoroughly-updated edition of Ed Yourdon's book takes into account many of the changes that have taken place in the more than six years since the publication of the first edition.

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Customer Reviews

60 Reviews

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

Average Customer Review

3.8 out of 5 stars (60 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading on the problem but generic on a solution .., May 26 2004

Hasan Alan Karatas (lansdale, pa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death March (Paperback)

Yourdon's book is a great read on identifying Death March projects. The fact is that we have quite a few people who fail to realize (or do not want to admit) that they are in such a project. After all, knowing the problem is a good start to a solution.

Yourdon does a nice job of examining the root causes through recent examples in the industry.

I expected to see more pragmatic steps to handling such projects .. but the solutions are generic at best.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A New Classic for Business and IT!, Feb 6 2004

Jeffery Gainer (pr�s Monaco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Death March (Paperback)

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.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Useful update to previous edition, Jan 24 2004

Clarke (Linlithgow, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Death March (Paperback)

This book is worth it for the chapter on Critical Chain alone.

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