Death March, part two

Let's talk about a death march again.  My note from last week seems to have stirred up a little bit of angst amongst the crowd.  Let's talk about some of the other characteristics of a true death march.

The project that I worked on had a requirement for a lot of people to be working on the project simultaneously.  To that end we converted a large room on the floor below us to a large "pod".  Affectionately called "The Pit", it housed twenty people in an area that should not have housed that many people.  To put it in a context that everyone could appreciate, there was approximately 22 square feet of space per person.  Go into the bathroom where you work and go into one of the bathroom stalls.  Imagine it about a foot wider and that is the amount of space that each person had.  You couldn't push your chair away from the desk if the person behind you had already done that as there wasn't enough room.

Accenture (Andersen Consulting at that point in time) had a strict dress code policy.  Shirt and tie with dress pants and dress shoes.  Always.  The Pit was not designed for twenty heat generating computer, twenty heat generating monitors and twenty heat generating people for extended periods of time.  With a southern exposure the room got warm.  Unbearably warm.  The thermometer didn't register above forty Celsius, so after the temperature went above that for a number of days in a row the dress code was relaxed, only for those that spent the entire day in the room.  (By the way, the highest temperature recorded in the room was fifty Celsius by a thermometer at my desk.)

My boss at that time once gave me supreme heck for leaving the building to get something to eat.  He expected me to stay in the building from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, even though he worked fewer hours and had air conditioning.

Lack of respect for the individual is a key component of a death march.  If you care about the people around you, if your supervisor cares about how things are going, if the organization as a whole understands what is going on and tries to alleviate some of the stress (paint ball parties, laser tag events, movie nights, pizza lunches) then what you've got is an unfortunate set of circumstances, not a death march.  Some projects have periods of high stress and high workload and that is, unfortunately, a common occurrence in our line of work.  How we and our associates handle the situation is what makes it a death march or a learning experience.