Quantifying Software

Software is one of the most important products in human history and is widely used by all industries and all countries. It is also one of the most expensive and labor-intensive products in human history. Software also has very poor quality that has caused many major disasters and wasted many millions of dollars. Software is also the target of frequent and increasingly serious cyber-attacks.

Among the reasons for these software problems is a chronic lack of reliable quantified data. This reference provides quantified data from many countries and many industries based on about 26,000 projects developed using a variety of methodologies and team experience levels. The data has been gathered between 1970 and 2017, so interesting historical trends are available.

Since current average software productivity and quality results are suboptimal, this book focuses on "best in class" results and shows not only quantified quality and productivity data from best-in-class organizations, but also the technology stacks used to achieve best-in-class results. The overall goal of this book is to encourage the adoption of best-in-class software metrics and best-in-class technology stacks. It does so by providing current data on average software schedules, effort, costs, and quality for several industries and countries.

Because productivity and quality vary by technology and size, the book presents quantitative results for applications between 100 function points and 100,000 function points. It shows quality results using defect potential and DRE metrics because the number one cost driver for software is finding and fixing bugs. The book presents data on cost of quality for software projects and discusses technical debt, but that metric is not standardized. Finally, the book includes some data on three years of software maintenance and enhancements as well as some data on total cost of ownership.