I imagine a death march to be something worse than that. In this case everyone shared the goal, it wasn't a made-up deadline forced on underlings by a clueless management. This management knew they could do it, and the team knew they could do it and had done it before. That's what they were there for; the thing they hoped to be able to do.
When I think of a death march, I think of an engineering task (usually a software program) with a known-impossible deadline, where the team pushes back on the deadline and is ignored. Necessary tools not provided, work hours monitored, rather than progress, etc.
Yeah, I agree, TSOANM isn't really about a death march.
I am abusing the term. I worked on some death marches with guys who saw themselves as Tom West though, which is probably why I chose that phrase.
A death march, to me, is a project that you know can't succeed but you are forced to go forward anyway.
I once had a boss hold the team at work until a piece of work was done (and it was 2am before it was clear it wasn't going to happen). That was just one day, but that project was a death march.
When I think of a death march, I think of an engineering task (usually a software program) with a known-impossible deadline, where the team pushes back on the deadline and is ignored. Necessary tools not provided, work hours monitored, rather than progress, etc.