Death marching gracefully - Commando behind army technique

December 22, 2007

A software developer's career doesn't mature until (s)he becomes a part of a death march. Unfortunately, I have been in quite a few of those over the years. The endings of those projects to me have been very similar to end of wars(based on my Hollywood experience). Few dead souls, some shell shocked, few mutilated. A mixed feeling of pain and relief.

While the agile methodologies do mitigate a lot of these risks, there are situations where aggressive or even unreasonable deadlines are unavoidable. Here is an attempt to minimize casualties:

The Technique

The army (the primary development team) marches towards maximum functionality complete by taking on new stories - never turning back. One or two commandos start behind the team perfecting what the army finishes - essentially cleaning up after the army.

Keyword

Momentum. Speed and perfection do not co-exist. This technique tries to maximize speed while getting closer to perfection.

Gains

When addressing lot of new development, it is important that the team is not bogged down by fringe issues that dramatically slow the progress. This allows quick turnaround of new functionality for demo's and feedback with the knowledge that the fringe items and bugs will be addressed by the commandos.

Tags: dev, pm