Terse Systems

Death march projects are a reality. Statistically speaking, they are unavoidable. Every programmer has a story about a death march project. You never complete a death march project… you just survive it.

The easiest way to start a death march project is to set an arbitary deadline which bears no relationship to the requirements. Typically the deadline is called “aggressive”, and if you’re lucky you’ll be working in an “extreme” manner. The best way to survive such a project is not to be there. Either explain why the deadline must be changed, or quit.

However, sometimes that option is not available. As an engineer, there’s not much you can do to stave off the worst effects of a death march. You can, however, prepare your life for it. It’s not much of a life, mind you. But it’s a way to cope.

The biggest single problem in death marches is that overtime sucks up your life. You barely have time to think. By the time you get home, you may be too tired to do anything even if you know what you have to do. Same thing in the mornings. I’d get up and stumble in the shower in the mornings and stare at the walls, not knowing what to do next.

This is going to sound pretty pathetic, but I made this work through a checklist. Get up, shave, shower, wash hair, soap down, brush teeth… a simple step by step guide even a zombie could follow.

Another problem with death marches is that I didn’t have time to do basic life activities like laundry, shopping, cleaning.

Cleaning I haven’t solved. Luckily, if you don’t spend any time at home, you don’t have to clean up much.

Laundry is easy. Dump it at the local dry cleaning place, and bill it as an expense.

Food is an issue – it’s easy to get an unhealthy pizza diet going. I used to deal with this in the past by buying food from Costco and sticking it in the fridge at work. Plain foods like bread, hummus and granola work best – they don’t go off, require a minimum of preparation, and they won’t make you fat. Fresh fruit worked as well.

The end of the day is worse for me than the starts. Usually when I get home I’m exhausted, frustrated, and stressed.

Stress is hard. There are some very frustrating times in death march projects. Part of what makes a death march project frustrating is knowing that it’s a wasted effort. (Death march projects take LONGER than well planned projects.) I know people who have collapsed in the server room after two days on their feet. I’ve been on projects where manager have had heart attacks and weren’t allowed back on site. At that point it’s not just a case of wasted effort, but wasted life.

One thing I’ve been learning to deal with stress is meditation. On the surface, meditation looks pretty silly, or at least boring. Watching someone meditate is about as interesting as paint dry. However, it DOES work, and is a much better stress reliever than an hour of video games or three pints of beer.

So when I get home, I have another checklist. This one tells me:

Food and Water
Meditation (15 minutes)
Exercise (40 push ups, 40 sit ups)
Diary (write up what happened that day)
Personal email (if I have time)
Sleep.

It’s important to do all of these even I feel like crap. Even if I haven’t managed to do a single useful thing that day, at least I can work through something at home and feel some small sense of accomplishment there. I know if I don’t do most of the above, things spiral from bad to worse.

Coffee is a bad way for me to get to sleep. If you’ve forgotten what time it is and drunk three Cokes by accident, the best way to get rid of the caffeine is to take Vitamin C. Vitamin C and Caffeine are mutally exclusive. If you still have trouble sleeping, try melatonin. It resets your sleeping habits so you don’t stay awake till 3 am if you’ve had several nights of deployments.

The biggest relief is control of your personal time. If you want the weekend off, you’re burnt out and you really think more work is counterproductive… Don’t. Explain you’re not turning up, and enjoy your time off. Managers have no right to expect employees to sacrifice everything for them, and they recognize this. When the alternative is you quitting, a few days doesn’t look so bad.