Creating a Software Engineering Culture

Chapter 10. Software Development Procedures

. . . remember that standards establish a floor below which we dare not fall, not a goal to which we aspire. Because standards have to be a consensus, they tend to be weak.

—Boris Beizer

People have been building bridges for thousands of years. Each bridge built, whether it remained standing for centuries or collapsed with the cautious passage of the first pedestrian, contributed to the body of civil engineering knowledge. Such accumulated knowledge enables the builder of every new bridge to use the best of what is known about materials, designs, construction, and maintenance. Every legitimate engineering discipline has a body of standards that represent the accumulated best practices of that discipline ...