The business of software

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses laws of software process in the U.S. In some software circles, process is considered to be the issue that needs to be resolved to fix the "software crisis." Improving process has become an article of faith in some corners, while avoiding it has assumed the status of guerrilla warfare in others. Some companies allocated enormous resources to defining a process for the construction of software, while the supposed users, the developers shun it altogether. The author discuses the process, if it is bad or flawed; to have more process or not have process at all. He suggests that the problem isn't process but what is desired of process and when and where it is applied. He notes that the kinds of knowledge that must be gained will vary from system to system. The degree to which the knowledge is unknown will pretty much determine how long it takes to acquire it. These degrees of unknowingness are called the "Five Orders of Ignorance" and they greatly affect the kind of process that can be used. The job of process is to ensure the point of starting and the guaranteed end.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 148 citations exist upstream.