People who’ve been in the IT field for some years tell tales of the bad old days when every project ended in a Death March. Well, actually, no one died. Truth be told, no one marched, either. But we called it a Death March. Some call it the Death March Antipattern. It was, in fact, one of the reasons people became interested in exploring alternative approaches to software development.
Younger professionals have managed to avoid the Death March Antipattern, for the most part. When oldtimers tell their tales, many of the younger folk react as if they were hearing Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, in which four retired gentlement reminisce about the difficulties of their youth: “There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.” “You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank.” “But you try and tell the young people today that…and they won’t believe ya’.” “Nope, nope.”
But it was real. On a typical 12-month software development project, the first ten months would be spent preparing useless documents and snoring through useless meetings. With the deadline looming, the team would scramble to get as much of the work done as possible in the remaining few weeks. It meant working 24×7 until you delivered, and then crashing for a few days. That was the Death March. And it had much in common with modern-day “agile” development practices.
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