Real-World Maintainable Software

Chapter 1. “How Did We Get into This Mess?”

Cape Canaveral, Florida. November 8, 1968. At precisely 9:46 a.m., the Delta E rocket ignites, propelling the Pioneer 9 spacecraft into the atmosphere. This is the fourth in a series of space missions directed at studying “space weather.”

The program was highly successful: while designed to last for six months, it provided data for 35 years. The main contractor of the Pioneer 6-9 program was TRW, a company in charge not just of the construction of the spacecraft but also of the design and implementation of the software that governed it. This was during the relatively early days of the software development industry, and there weren’t too many references on running software development projects. Perhaps for this reason, Winston W. Royce, one of TRW’s most prominent software development project managers, published in 1970 a paper titled “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems,” in which he described his views on making software projects succeed. Royce’s paper was famously attributed as being the first written reference to the Waterfall Development Model, describing it as a “grandiose approach to software development.”

This model took the world by storm. Companies all over the planet started to follow this methodology. Certifications were created for project managers who would be accredited as following the Waterfall Model to the letter. Teachers of computer science in universities of all countries included them in their lectures. ...