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Nov 23, 2014 at 21:27 comment added Craig Tullis Deathmarch is more a term for a project that was so poorly estimated and has gone so far over schedule that the team ends up engaged in a seemingly never-ending string of late nights and giving up a normal life outside the office, working until exhaustion for weeks or months on end to finish the project. Even if the project ends up being a success financially, the deathmarch still happened and still wrecked the morale of your team.
Nov 21, 2014 at 22:35 comment added smci Not necessarily: "death march" implies that failure is foreseeable from some point e.g. major spec changes, spec creep, unsatisifiable requirements etc. That WP article defines two different types: "Death march: a project where the members feel it is destined to fail, or requires a stretch of unsustainable overwork."
Nov 21, 2014 at 21:09 comment added Kevin Krumwiede "Death march" implies that a high probability of failure was foreseen from the beginning, at least by some; a "sinking ship" implies that the inevitability of disaster is now recognized, but it may not have always been inevitable or foreseen.
Nov 21, 2014 at 20:31 comment added smci Hmm, first time someone has said that IME. I see the term all over the place. "near-universal"?
Nov 21, 2014 at 20:05 comment added Hot Licks I'm just saying that it's not all that "universal".
Nov 21, 2014 at 19:50 comment added smci @Hot Licks: so common it has its own Wikipedia entry en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management). "sinking ship" just means it's failing, but deathmarch means management are proceeding even though it's bound to fail.
Nov 21, 2014 at 18:17 comment added Hot Licks I've been in software for over four decades and I don't recall every hearing the term "death march" applied to a project with which I was familiar. "Sinking ship" I heard several times, with the term "taking the splash" used to refer to those who somehow escaped from the project.
Nov 21, 2014 at 0:44 history edited smci CC BY-SA 3.0
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Nov 21, 2014 at 0:06 history answered smci CC BY-SA 3.0