[MartinCron]

Death marches and late nights take a lot out of you

Death marches seem to happen far less often (in my experience) when I'm releasing early and releasing often.

If the system automatically tests and ships out every incremental change multiple times daily, you don't have the crazy weeks before/after big releases as there are no big releases. Shipping new code is a normal part of every day and I get to go home to hang out with my kids on time.

[thom]

A bad week or tricky release isn't a death march, and I congratulate you on a career well managed if that's what you genuinely believe.

[MartinCron]

You are completely correct. I've been involved with bad weeks, tricky releases, death marches, pretty much every sort of dysfunctional software development clusterfuck you can imagine short of Duke Nukem Forever.

The point remains the same. My experience shows that committing to incrementalism in design/code/test/release improves quality of life as well as quality of product.