T-SQL Tuesday #107 – My Death March Project

T-SQL Tuesday #107 – My Death March Project

This month I have the honor of hosting T-SQL Tuesday #107 about Death March Projects. The topic for this months T-SQL Tuesday #107 (hosted by yours truly Blog/Twitter) is:

“Tell me your project horror stories – the worse the better”

Through some redaction, slight change of facts, and creative control with some details I will protect the innocent; and in this case, the guilty as well.

If you don’t have time to read my lengthy exposition then please skip down to the section titled “The Making of a Death March Project”.

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T-SQL Tuesday #107 Invitation: Death March

T-SQL Tuesday #107 Invitation: Death March

There is a famous book in our field written in the 2000’s by Ed Yourdon called “Death March“. In it he details the phenomenon in project management of death march software projects. He observed a trend in organizations who plan software projects to estimate so poorly that completion becomes overwhelming and unlikely.

More companies than ever before could be considered “software companies”. Project planning hasn’t gotten much better over time and we still have terribly managed projects. The best reason to explain this I found on Quora – Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? In particular, read the answer by Michael Wolfe midway through the page. It is both a humorous and scary analogy.

On this month of Halloween we are going to discuss our death march project horrors!

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