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Death March
By Edward Yourdon
10/10 from 2 reviews
Categories: Computers & Internet, Business
Buy at Amazon.co.uk
2 reviews
Know how to spot em -- if you must: know how to handle em
Death March is a pretty light and easy read - fairly thin too so borrow it off someone for the w/e and read it! Time well spent for anyone with an interest/involvement in non-trivial sized IT projects. It's not aimed at but is very relevant to any attempted .com style startup as well as companies that are involved in or undertake several month+ IT projects.

This book works to define a class of projects/endeavours that are almost asking to fail -- looks at classifying this helpfully and what the pros and cons might be for being in various types of these projects (some can be very trying but enjoyable heroic efforts if you're into that kind of thing). It gives good advice on how to spot and classify these types of projects and gives good warning for those heading towards one. And for those who have no choice or leap into them with giddy abandon: it gives very useful advice on both surviving them and raising you c. 1% success rate to 10% ;)
Rating: 10/10
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Posted by Manar Hussain on Fri, 12th October 2001, 7:56pm
compulsory reading at boo.com
I bought a copy of this book for every member of staff in the Technology department at boo.com (along with a copy of "Burn Rate" by Michael Wolff) on 19th May 1999 (27 copies of each according to Amazon's order history) just after we'd missed the first launch date.

The tagline explains that it's "The complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 'Mission Impossible' Projects".

It's a great book about recognizing when you're involved in such a project and what to do to minimise the fall out (alright... maybe I didn't do too well at that bit). It really did help me attempt to manage that development project.
Rating: 9/10
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Posted by James on Wed, 18th July 2001, 5:29pm
2 reviews