I’ve begun writing a new, updated edition of my Death March book, which was last updated in 2003.During the ensuing six years, there have been a number of good things — especially collaborative Web 2.0 tools and technologies (including blogs, wikis, etc.) — that have made it easier to manage and participate in death-march projects. But starting at the end of 2007, one bad thing has clearly emerged as a significant influence on such projects: the global recession. Layoffs, salary freezes, and spending cutback are a common reaction to any recession; but it seems likely that things will be much worse this time around, and death-march projects will be even that much more difficult to manage, participate in, and survive.

So I’ve begun revamping, rewriting, and updating the material from the 2nd edition of Death March — to help identify and explain the good (which we’d like to see more of), the bad (which we’d like to minimize), and the ugly (which we’d like to anticipate, so we can avoid it altogether) aspects of death-march projects. I’m writing this edition in a collaborative, blog-like fashion, with lots of links, comments, YouTube clips, and feedback from  project managers and death-march participants around the world; thus far, I’ve written the Table of Contents, a preface, and the first two sections (one of which is completely new) of Chapter 1.

I’ve put it on a separate website from this blog — partly because I’m using Apple’s iWeb development tool to generate new content quickly and easily, and partly to make it password-protected in order to keep spammers and hackers out. Thus, if you’d like to see the new material as it evolves, and/or if you’d like to provide feedback and commentary, you’ll need to send an email message to ed at yourdon dot com. I’ll send back an email message with URL, user-id, and password.Thanks!