The Death March project starts when we don't know what DONE looks like. Many of the agile approaches attempt to avoid this by exchanged not knowing for budget and time bounds. In the enterprise IT domain, those providing the money, usually have a need for all the features on a specific date to meet the business goal.
ICD-10 go live, new product launch enabled by new enrollment, Go Live of new ERP company wide, with incremental transition across divisions or sites. Maintenance support systems for new fielded products on or before products put into service - are examples of all features, on budget, on schedule.
The elicitation of the underlying technical and operational requirements has to be incremental of course, because knowing all the requirements upfront is just not possible. Even in the nth install of ERP at the nth plant, there will be new and undiscovered requirements.
It's knowing the needed Capabiliities of the system that are the foundation of project success.
Here is a top level view of how to capture and use Capabilities Based Planning in enterprise IT.
