Ben’s Mind

I’m done with my haitus from blogging…until I need another haitus ;).

What I wanted to write about is the typical, ever more frequent now, developer “death marches.” From my experiences, as well as those told by friends, occur when some executives get something in their head that must be done by a specific date with arguably shakey business reason and rationale. Then the IT manager realizes they have no real authority as they are instructed to literally kill their team by making them work mandatory overtime, weekends, and holidays. This typically leads to the developers to be stressed, zombie-like (no headshots please), and ready for revenge. {Imagine the retaliation effort here}. After the unsuccessful uprising of developer sarcasm and/or poor code…the inevitable almost always happens. The…saving grace, if you will - some executive realizes that the requirements and testing efforts are not ready, and they really had not been from the start. So the project gets delayed, shelved, or worked on at a slower pace.

I spoke with a friend of mine last week - learning that they were grinding away, now addicted to caffeine, and affecting their health only so that they could have the 3-day Memorial Day weekend to their family. I know of some others who last year had the Christmas season, but at the expense of their January thru May.

I believe companies are doing this due to higher turnover and the current economic situation. They see this as a cost-saving measure. It clearly is not. Not only does one’s codebase suffer, but their other employees see this and company-wide morale erodes. Then comes the turnover - which usually occurs during a hiring freeze (for added smite and dramatic effect). And the project, which may have even been very good for the company’s business and future, suffers to a point it either gets canceled, shelved, or redesigned by some astronaut architect.

So IT managers and executive, if you value your livelihood, and that of your developers, please, do not send them through a death march. Developers have this embedded sense of justice - and one way or another, they will win - you can bet your overpriced mocha on it…mwahahahaha…ahem…seriously…they will win. Serious.