zlacker

>>vimes6+(OP)
It seems strange to me that software engineers are so frequently singled out for schedule slippage, when the impression I get is that every novel engineering project suffers from the exact same problem. Projects to design and build new military and civilian hardware and infrastructure always involve budget and schedule overruns of months or years. Can anyone provide convincing empirical evidence that software projects are delayed more than hardware projects of equivalent budget and distinctiveness from previous solutions?

A negative comparison often seems to be made between software engineering and construction, but it seems to me that the latter is a unique subfield of engineering, where you have an unusually large number of projects with a roughly homogenous set of constraints and variables. This has allowed those constraints and variables to be studied, understood and mastered to produce a discipline that more closely resembles mass-production. And in those subfields of software that also involve more homogenous constraints, such as the production of standard commercial websites, you do see a more controlled and templated approach, using tools like Wordpress.

>>stupid+wg
I think there's a difference between companies that build software for the market versus those that build software for a contract. The former tends to be driven by a team that believes in the product that they're trying to deliver, has a management team that has at least some vision for the software and investors that believe in the company's approach to the market. They want to make software / a product that represents the organization well and has long term value.

In the latter case, like so many government sponsored engineering projects, the company has no real long term incentive beyond what is written into the contract. Management isn't driven by the software being produced so much as meeting the contractual requirements that result in payments. In my experience, software contracting houses are a lot more likely to hold schedules over the heads of developers, and that's purely driven by the terms of the contract (billable hours). In contrast, even when I have been a contractor for a company that is building the product for itself, they tend to push for the goals of the project while ensuring it meets the needs of the company. The difference in pressure as a developer is quite substantial.