Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
1. Overview Software is valuable when it produces information in a manner that enables people and systems to meet their objec- tives more effectively. Software engineering techniques have value when they enable software developers to build more valuable software. Software economics is the sub-field of software engineering that seeks improvements which enable software engineers to reason more effectively about important economic aspects of software development, including cost, benefit, risk, opportunity, uncertainty, incomplete knowledge and the value of additional informa- tion, implications of competition, and so forth. In this paper, we survey the current status of selected parts of software economics, highlighting the gaps both between practice and theory and between our current understanding and what is needed. The sheer volume of current software costs makes the study and application of software economics techniques a significant area of concern and opportunity. Recent studies (1,2) estimate roughly 2,000,000 software professionals in the US in 1998. At typical salaries of $60-80,000/year and a typical overhead rate of 150%, this translates into a $300- 400 billion annual expenditure on software development in the US alone. A conservative estimate of worldwide soft- ware costs is twice the US costs, or $600-800 billion per year. With the kind of expenditures now being made on soft- ware, just the economics of more efficient software produc- tion are important to understand and apply. Software development is widely seen to be inefficient, which means that there is considerable room for improvement. A 10% reduction in software production costs translates into a |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
1999 | 10.1016/S0950-5849(99)00091-9 | Information and Software Technology |
Keywords | DocType | Volume |
Software economics,Decision making,Cost estimates | Journal | 41 |
Issue | ISSN | Citations |
14 | 0950-5849 | 5 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
1.70 | 6 | 2 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| B Boehm | 1 | 5 | 1.70 |
| K Sullivan | 2 | 5 | 1.70 |