Software Development Myths
Pressman (1997) describes a number of common beliefs or myths that software
managers, customers, and developers believe falsely. He describes these
myths as ``misleading attitudes that have caused serious problems.'' We
look at these myths to see why they are false, and why they lead to trouble.
Software Management Myths. Pressman describes managers' beliefs
in the following mythology as grasping at straws:
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Development problems can be solved by developing and documenting standards.
Standards have been developed by companies and standards organizations.
They can be very useful. However, they are frequently ignored by developers
because they are irrelevant and incomplete, and sometimes incomprehensible.
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Development problems can be solved by using state-of-the art tools.
Tools may help, but there is no magic. Problem solving requires more than
tools, it requires great understanding. As Fred Brooks (1987) says, there
is no silver bullet to slay the software development werewolf.
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When schedules slip, just add more people This solution seems intuitive:
if there is too much work for the current team, just enlarge it. Unfortunately,
increasing team size increases communication overhead. New workers must
learn project details taking up the time of those who are already immersed
in the project. Also, a larger team has many more communication links,
which slows progress. Fred Brooks (1975) gives us one of the most famous
software engineering maxims, which is not a myth, ``adding people
to a late project makes it later.''
Software Customer Myths. Customers often vastly underestimate the
difficulty of developing software. Sometimes marketing people encourage
customers in their misbeliefs.
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Change is easily accommodated, since software is malleable.
Software can certainly be changed, but often changes after release
can require an enormous amount of labor.
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A general statement of need is sufficient to start coding
This myth reminds me of a cartoon that I used to post on my door. It
showed the software manager talking to a group of programmers, with the
quote: ``You programmers just start coding while I go down and find out
what they want the program to do.'' This scenario is an exaggeration. However,
for developers to have a chance to satisfy the customers requirements,
they need detailed descriptions of these requirements. Developers cannot
read the minds of customers.
Developer Myths. Developers often want to be artists (or artisans),
but the software development craft is becoming an engineering discipline.
However myths remain:
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The job is done when the code is delivered.
Commercially successful software may be used for decades. Developers
must continually maintain such software: they add features and repair bugs.
Maintenance costs predominate over all other costs; maintenance may be
70% of the development costs. This myth is true only for shelfware
--- software that is never used, and there are no customers for next release
of a shelfware product.
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Project success depends solely on the quality of the delivered program.
Documentation and software configuration information is very important
to the quality. After functionality, maintainability, see the preceding
myth, is of critical importance. Developers must maintain the software
and they need good design documents, test data, etc to do their job.
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You can't assess software quality until the program is running.
There are static ways to evaluate quality without running a
program. Software reviews can effectively determine the quality of requirements
documents, design documents, test plans, and code. Formal (mathematical)
analyses are often used to verify safety critical software, software security
factors, and very-high reliability software.