Product 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.
From the Back Cover
Death MarchSecond Edition
The #1 guide to surviving "doomed" projects...Fully updated and expanded, with powerful new techniques!
At an alarming rate, companies continue to create death-march projects, repeatedly! What's worse is the amount of rational, intelligent people who sign up for a death-march projectsaeprojects whose schedules, estimations, budgets, and resources are so constrained or skewed that participants can hardly survive, much less succeed. In Death March, Second Edition, Ed Yourdon sheds new light on the reasons why companies spawn Death Marches and provides you with guidance to identify and survive death march projects.
Yourdon covers 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": wargaming your next project
- Applying triage to deliver the features that matter most
- When it's time to walk away
This isn't a book about perfectly organized projects in "textbook" companies. It's about your project, in your company. But you won't just recognize your reality: you'll learn exactly what to do about it.
About the Author
EDWARD YOURDON has been called one of the ten most influential people in software, and has been inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame alongside Charles Babbage, Seymour Cray, James Martin, Grace Hopper, and Bill Gates. An internationally recognized consultant, he is author or coauthor of more than 25 books, including Byte Wars, Managing High-Intensity Internet Projects, and Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. He co-developed the popular Coad/Yourdon methodology, co-founded the influential Cutter Consortium Business Technology Council, and serves on the Board of Directors of iGate and Mascot Systems.
