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.
-
So, is the term an anachronism?
-
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?
-
Are software development methodologies are simply various ways of managing crises?
Hi Paul,
Been following the blog for some time, and I saw your talk at TestBash on Friday. I figured if you could do that, I could certainly spend the time to get involved online a little more often!
I’d say we’re absolutely in crisis. QA appear to be in a perpetual panicked state to invent new processes and new automations to chase the pace of development. How many projects have compromised an element of testing in favour of shipping the software sooner because we haven’t got a method to deliver the desired assurances in the timescales that are acceptable to the business? Development itself is doing fine to expand into the ever increasing space. We’re still in the foetus stage, where our “current thinking” and our best tools are evolving at a breakneck pace, but still not fast enough. We deliver reports to our stakeholders and line managers that show strategies and coverage and risks because we know we can’t ever deliver actual quality assurances.
Can the software crisis *ever* end?
And so we can’t offer assurances – isn’t “mitigated risk” enough?