While outside it's been a warm inviting Spring, inside we've been driven by single focus, aimed at our product launch in June. Others sometimes call this the "death march" period, which personally I think is disrespectful of those forced to take real deach marches. Besides, death marches are usually considered unhealthy and ultimately counter-productive. Instead, I prefer to call our development endgame, the period of sustained focus before a release, a toboggan run.

For those that haven't experienced a real toboggan run, it's starts high up on a snowy hill with five or six people looking down the slope at a jump that's usually much bigger than it seems from up top. Everyone takes a seat behind the front person, or "pilot", who grabs the toboggan's front curled part with an exaggerated hope of steering it effectively. The last person pushes the whole crew until there's some momentum, then jumps on board and holds on tight.

It's been a while, but there's three things I remember clearly about toboggan runs. First, you build momentum much faster than you think. At the start, the whole thing seems impossibly slow. Then later you realize all at once, "Criminy! We're really moving!" (People often bail at this point.) Second, when the pilot steers, the tobbogan's side digs into the snow, usually giving the feeling that the whole thing's about to tip over, as it sometimes does. Third, when you hit the jump, there's this impossibly long moment of suspended animation, where everyone's either bracing for impact, or floating akimbo, arms and legs flailing because the jump caused everyone to let go.

And then you land. Big thud, then the follow through. As a kid, I was unbreakable, and we certainly pushed the limits with longer runs and bigger jumps. As crazy as it got, we always came up smiling.

Which brings me back to software development. On our current toboggan run, developing Tidepool & Storymill, we're on our way down the mountain, but we haven't hit the jump yet. We're starting to really feel the momentum now. Some of the course corrections have been interesting. We can just make out the jump ahead ... it's appears to be our preview release, during the WWW2004 show .. only three weeks away!

Criminy!