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| [image credit: hgenthe on pixabay.com] |
Today's meditation:
Signs you might be on a "Death March" project...
- Scope increases by a multiple [n] (where [n] > 1, and [n] is quite often an integer), but time and resources stay the same.
- The number of REQUIRED [r] productive hours that must be expended per day, to maintain the schedule, is greater than AVAILABLE hours [a]: where the number of MANDATORY [m] hours spent in meetings - is subtracted from the possible WORKING hours [w]...
Such that, [a] = [w] - [m], and [r] > [a], with [a] approaching zero, as TIME [t] progresses.
Other possible signs...
- Management cancels all vacations through the end of the year.
- Management mandates staff must work weekends.
- Management states that working 4am-9pm is expected
- When there are no more slots available between 8am-6pm - meetings begin to be scheduled at 7am, 6am, 5am, 4am...or 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, ...
- You find yourself regularly working at 1am to complete status reports (2 days after they are due) - because that is the only time period you could find, where you had sufficient capacity to focus on that task...
- You don't have any time to perform QA on the work that is being performed.
- The work products being produced are a [3] on a [1-10] scale - due to lack of sufficient time to do quality work.
- Management refuses to accept the estimates provided by staff - and simply picks delivery dates.
- There is no time to do actual work - because staff are in meetings 90%+ of the time.
- There is no "Think Time"
- There is no reserve capacity in the team to handle spikes in demand.
- New work is continually being added - with no additional time, or resources, added.
- You spend more time in status meetings, than in working meetings.
- Requirements are constantly changing - with no additional time, or resources, added.
- The Gantt chart looks like a wall of logs stacked to the ceiling, with the finish dates all aligning on the right side - and everything is showing GREEN...until the last minute, and then suddenly goes RED.
- Workload is projected to increase by 400%, and yet 75% of staff is to be eliminated.
- You don't have time to eat breakfast.
- You don't have time to eat lunch.
- You don't have time for any exercise.
- You don't have time during working hours for bio breaks.
- Frequently there is zero slack time between meetings - all day long.
- Management has purposefully understaffed the team - and expects the team will work nights and weekends (as a standard operating model) - to make-up for the capacity shortfall.
