Skip to content

Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S.S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project.

— Barry Boehm Software risk management: principles and practices (1991)

Another quote →

More quotes by Barry Boehm

Throughout the software life cycle, there are many decision situations involving limited resources in which software engineering economics techniques provide useful assistance.

Software engineering economics (1984)

“Stop the life cycle-I want to get off!”

A spiral model of software development and enhancement (1988)

If we look at the discipline of software engineering, we see that the microeconomics branch of economics deals more with the types of decisions we need to make as software engineers or managers.

Software engineering economics (1984)

Poor management can increase software costs more rapidly than any other factor. Particularly on large projects, each of the following mismanagement actions has often been responsible for doubling software development costs.

Barry Boehm (1981)

Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making.

Barry W. Boehm (1981)

All Barry Boehm quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Barry Boehm (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.