As delivered in under 1:39 at TestBash 2.0, Brighton, 22nd March 2013.
[This is from my notes. It probably isn’t what I actually blurted out. Video evidence to follow, probably…]
While thinking about what to talk about today for some reason a term that I had not really encountered since university days came to mind. Has anyone heard of the term Software Crisis?
[One person put their hand up: Michael Bolton IIRC.]
Well there’s a reason for that. It was coined back in 1968 at the NATO Conference on Software Engineering held in Germany. It was (is?) an emotive, provocative term that posited this: with the increase in complexity of software made possible by rapid advances in computing power, how can we ever successfully manage such projects? We can do anything with a computer we can set our minds to. There is no bound to things that are virtual, and whose mechanics are invisible. To paraphrase Fred Brooks, there will never be enough human resources to build (provably) correct software.
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So, is the term an anachronism?
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If the term no longer has currency [it seems that way by show of hands hand], are we still in crisis or out of the woods?
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Are software development methodologies are simply various ways of managing crises?