Why crunch mode doesn't work

Came across an interesting article today which is highly relevant for the game and movie industry, and a lot of IT related jobs. It seems like it has already become a normal norm to have crunch time at the end of projects. Where you work days, nights and weekends for an extended periode of time to finish on deadline. To me it looks like a phemenoma that only relatively new industries use, which also the article explains, while old industries have gone away from the crunch mode model a long time ago.

Now I understand that crunch mode can be hard to avoid sometimes. Especially in large deadline based projects where you might slack some in the beginning, but crunch mode should never be an estimated part of a project. In fact I think using crunch mode over a long period of time is only a sign of bad project management and too few milestones. One of my earlier teachers though me one thing when budgeting projects. Estimate the time and then add 20% on top. It seems to me far too many go the other way. Estimate and cut 20%...

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IGDA - Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work