“The captain of the Costa Concordia could be software-project” – Elektronik Praxis

Professor Jochen Ludewig, former head of the Department of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, developer and manager has taken urgently to prayer. In his speech at this year’s ESE Congress dealt with the question: “How much software engineering you can afford”

At the beginning of his keynote looked Professor Ludewig very far back to the beginnings of human evolution , “The production and editing software was not an issue in evolution. For this man is no more armed as for dealing with X-rays. “

The man who so Ludewig, though was able to develop complex artifacts, but rather bad at it, to understand and to change. With the concept of software engineering that emerged in the late sixties of the last century, the demand was linked to software developers like the engineers should work from the classical engineering.

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Since then, a number of approaches and methods have been developed, which should strengthen the engineering art software development. The principle of KISS (Keep it small and simple) is, for example, any developer familiar. Bureaucratic rules and complicated techniques, however, have not solved the problem.

In addition, should non-functional requirements for the user-friendliness of the software or the maintainability of the software to be integrated from the outset in the development. The corresponding data are indeed difficult to grasp and specified. “But that does ignoring these aspects are not meaningful,” Ludewig. Warned

In the end, so Ludewig, it’ll go software engineering work towards reducing the costs in the long term. He quoted the American software pioneer Barry Boehm, who was known through its cost considerations to development projects. Boehm had established some thirty years ago, the rule of thumb that for every dollar will put into the development, two US dollars should be spent on maintenance.

“The maintenance portion is likely to be much higher since then,” said the Professor Stuttgart dry. Therefore, it is important to reduce maintenance and increase the cost of development, similar to when you endows a new building with thermal insulation – this will help then to save later costs

One difference. to classical engineering disciplines should not be neglected in software engineering, so Ludewig: In software development, could one wrong bit completely change a function. “It is not so in traditional mechanical engineering,” observed the professor.

But the fact that even one wrong bit can have devastating consequences bug in the software development would be “very, very expensive.” Therefore, a very high effort should be driven to avoid error.

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Professor Ludewig could watch again and again that every few years a comprehensive solution to these problems was promised. “Then a new sow is driven through the village.” In the late eighties, they had only to find resignation, that there is no “silver bullet” that is not a panacea for the problems in software development. So if anyone offering such a miracle cure, Ludewig recommends succinct: “Kick out immediately!”