Software Crisis Assignment Help | Software Crisis Homework Help

Software Crisis

The phrase software crisis refers to a set of problems encountered in the development of computer software during 1960s. Within this period the software industry unsuccessfully attempted to build larger and larger software systems by simply scaling up existing development techniques. As a result:

•    Poor quality software was produced.
•    Development teams exceeded the budget.
•    Late delivery of software.
•    User requirements not completely supported by the software.
•    Unreliable software.
•    Difficult to maintain the produced software.
The phrase software crisis is also used to encapsulate all the ills of the software and computing systems industry.

Some of the examples of software project failures re listed below:

•    In June 1996, Anane 5 launcher broke up and exploded after 40 seconds of take off at an attitude of less than 4 kilometers. The total loss was $500 million. It was found that the error was due to overflow in the conversion from a 64 bit floating point number to 16 bit signed integer.

•    In early eighties, M/s Sperry Corporations of US was hired by the internal revenue service to automate the processing of income tax forms but as system was inefficient to handle the load it had to be replaced. As a result $90 millions were spent in addition to the original $103 million to enhance the Sperry Corporation equipment. Internal revenue service paid $40.2 million as interest to customers and $22.3 million in overtime wages to its employees.

•    Another shocking case of improperly designed software is about Theac-25 a radiation therapy and X-ray machine. This machine killed several patients due to malfunctioning of arrow keys which are not programmed properly by the designers. As a result high does of radiation was given to patients whereas only low levels were required.

•    In early nineties British House of Common Public Accounts Committee, highlighted in a report-an overspend of £4b pounds as a result of project cost over-runs on an annual budget of £8.2b, the software being the major culprit.

•    Ministry of Agriculture in UK alone had to undergo a loss of 12 million pounds because of software errors.

•    The launch of space shuttle Columbia was delayed by three thus costing a loss of million dollars.

A number of large size projects fails, which it is called software Runaways and results into so called “Software Crisis”. Statistics shown that only 2% of the projects made were used as they were delivered, 3% of the projects are used after modification, 47% of the software was never used only delivered, 19% of the software rejected or reworked and 29% was not even delivered. The problems increased because of increased dependence of business on software and lack of systematic approach to build the software. Developers and researchers realized that development of software was not an easy and straight forward task, instead it required lot of engineering principles.

For more help in Software Crisis click the button below to submit your homework assignment