Death March Projects

A Death March project can be defined as a project whose project parameters exceed the normal measures by at least fifty percent. Or put another way, they are projects whose schedule, staff, budget, or resources are 50-100% less than what they should be. These types of projects are usually categorized by size and by the number of user organizations involved. These types of projects are also mostly done by large companies that actually have large amounts of resources that they can pump into the project to keep it going.

A good example is the United States Government. They engage in Death March projects all the time, such as the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S) project that cost billions of dollars of tax payer’s money and ended up being pulled. Companies create Death March projects based on some of the following reasons. The first has to do with company politics. The second is because of naïve and/or devious promises executives and managers make to other managers, executives and clients.

The third has to do with the “marine corps mentality” where executives believe that a programmer can go without sleep to get a project done faster. The forth is because of the competition caused by new technologies and companies trying keep pace with their competitors. The fifth is from pressure due to government regulations, and sixth is due to unexpected and/or unplanned crises that occur that make projects rushed or resources diverted to another part of the business. Have you ever been involved in a Death March Project? If so, how did you handle it?

By Le-Andris Daniel