Many software development projects are over-budget and behind schedule, and the software produced is often unreliable and unusable. Take the short quiz below to test your knowledge about the alarming state of software development productivity and software quality.
1. The typical software development project takes _____ months.
(Parikh, G., and Zvegintzov, N. (1983). Tutorial on Software Maintenance. Silver Springs, MD: IEEE Computer Society.)
2. To be considered a large system, a system today must contain at least _____ lines of executable code.
(Fairley, R. (1985). Software Engineering Concepts. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.)
3. What percent of the $92 billion software market is commercial "shrink-wrap" personal computer products?
(Gibbs, W. Software's Chronic Crisis. Scientific American. Sept 1994.)
4. For a medium-sized software system, how many lines of executable source code are typically produced per day per person (averaged over the entire period of development).
(Boehm, B. (1981). Software Engineering Economics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.)
5. The approximate number of errors found in every 1000 lines of executable source code during development of a software system is _____.
(Mills, H., Dyer, M, and Linger, H. (Sept 1987). IEEE Software, pp20-.)
6. Approximately what percentage of software system that begin development are finally completed?
(Jones, T.C. (1981). Program quality and programmer productivity, T.C. Jones (ed.), Programming Productivity: Issues for the Eighties (pp. 130-161). Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society Press.)
7. Most errors found by users in software are the result of
a. coding errors.
b.
difficulties understanding the problem statement.
c.
system integration errors.
d. errors in the design of
the solution.
(Basili, V.R. and Perricone, B.T. (Jan. 1984). Software errors and complexity: An empirical investigation. Communications of the ACM, 27(6), pp556-563.)
8. The cost of owning and maintaining software is typically _____ times as expensive as developing the software.
(Lientz, B., and Swanson, E. (1980). Software Maintenance Management: A Study of the Maintenance of Computer Application Software in 487 Data Processing Organizations. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.)
9. A 1979 study by the Government Accounting Office found that for software development contracts:
___ % were used as
delivered.
___ % were used after
rework.
___ % were abandoned or
reworked.
___ % delivered but not
used.
___ % paid for but not delivered.
(Comptroller General. (1979). Contracting for computer software development. General Accounting Office Report. (FGMSD-80-4). Washington, D.C.)
10. A more recent study (1995) of 365 Information Systems professionals found the statistics on software development project:
___ % successful.
___ %
operational (but less than successful).
___ %
cancelled.
(source: PC Week magazine).
11. During the 1990's, software maintenance accounted
for what percent of the software budget for an information system organization?
Estimate for 2000's?
(Pressman, R. (1992). Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.)
12. A 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce
estimates that software defects cost the U.S. economy _____ per year.
a. $100 million.
b. $500
million.
c. $1 billion.
d.
$60 billion.
(Source: Infoworld,
June 2002).
1. 12 to 23 months.
2. 50,000.
3. less than 10%.
4. less than 10.
5. 50 to 60.
6. 70 to 79%.
7. b.
8. twice.
9. 2, 3, 45, 20, 30
10. 16, 53, 31.
11. a) 60% b) 80%
Only 16.2% of software projects are completed on-time and on-budget. In
larger companies, a meager 9% of technology projects come in on-time and
on-budget. In addition, about one third of all projects will be canceled before
they ever get completed. Further results indicate 53% of projects will cost an
average of 189% of their original estimates. In financial terms this analysis
revealed that over $100 billion in cancellations and $60 billion in budget over
runs occur in the Software Sector annually.
source:The Standish Group
Chaos Report www.standishgroup.com
12. d) $60 billion, or 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product.