Organizations increasingly rely on information technology (IT) both to perform their day-today operations and as a source of new products and services. The popular focus has been on hardware components, and that story has been overwhelmingly positive: the new technologies that come to market are cheaper, more reliable, and more portable than previous ones.
However, much less has been written about the software side of IT, and what has been written has not been positive. We commonly read that software is late, over budget, and of poor quality. Specific examples of software in the news are almost always negative — microcomputer software vendors that deliver releases late, federal government systems projects that never reach the implementation stage, and the recent telephone system outage that was blamed on a Texas supplier who “changed only three or four lines of the program.”1
This imbalance has reached such proportions that it has been termed the software crisis. Software production represents the single biggest obstacle to the successful use of IT in organizations; all precepts such as “using IT for strategic advantage,” “reengineering the business,” and “informating the workplace” become mere slogans if the necessary software is not properly delivered on time.
Into this void have rushed a multitude of vendors and consultants offering solutions to the crisis. A quick review of trade press magazines will reveal articles... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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