CSCE 431 Lecture 1

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State of the Art: Embarrassment

For every 6 large software projects, 2 will be cancelled for failures in design and implementation Gibbs, Neumann, CACM 1997

Legal/license agreements: "You paid us and we promised you nothing"

Conjecture: Some companies cannot write good software, others can...

• There must be some art to getting projects to succeed.

Why do many projects fail?

• poor management
• failure to implement good practices (testing, continuous integration, version control)
• Poor documentation?
• Poor estimates?
  • Unrealistic Schedules
  • Inappropriate Staffing
  • CHanging requirements during development
  • Poor quality work
  • Believing in Magic
• Economics: System judged based on number of features, not security and reliability
• Incompetence?

• software systems are large and complex
• They operate in complex and changing environments
• The entire infrastructure (languages, libraries, OS, computers) changes continuously
• Systems are crucial for the operation of the entire business (quality, schedule, and budget pressure)

Observations

Lots of problems, or just different views?

Fred Brooks: No Silver Bullet

• silver bullets still pop up (new programming language that will solve the world's problems)

Definition of Software Engineering

Software Engineering is a collection of techniques, methodologies, and tools ...

IEEE: The applictaion of a systematic, disciplined...