Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management

Chapter 17. Evaluate Bids on the Facts

There is a tendency among those who regard the making of software as a kind of manufacturing activity to think of coding as the essence of that activity. They declare, “Just get coding under way and all will be well!” That, of course, is far from reality.

The Reality Is Research and Development

Software development is actually a research and development activity, close to research in its early phases and development in the later phases. It is never manufacturing in the sense of turning out some number of pieces a week, regardless of the development schedule allowed. The intellectual content of what the project staff does takes amounts of schedule time that do not become indefinitely compressible by adding ...