Why Does Software Cost So Much?
and other puzzles of the information age

by Tom DeMarco

During a visit to a software organization a few months ago, I was utterly perplexed when a cynical young systems programmer asked me if I was aware of the Dilbert Correlation Factor (DCF). When I responded with a blank look and a shrug, the programmer told me that it was well known that an organization's SEI process maturity rating is inversely related to the number of Dilbert cartoons taped on the walls and doors of the office space. The profusion of such cartoons in his company, the programmer continued, was ample proof that his organization was at level one, and destined to stay there.

There's no question that Scott Adams is a genius, and I'm as delighted as everyone else that Dilbert is now available on the World Wide Web. But for those of you who prefer to use something other than cartoons to make your point about the utter absurdity of most software projects and software organizations, I have a new DCF: the DeMarco Correlation Factor. Rather than taping cartoons on your office wall, consider instead distributing the provactive essays from DeMarco's new book, "Why Does Software Cost So Much?" I can't prove that there's an inverse correlation between the number of such essays you find directly applicable to your organization and the organization's SEI rating, but I will assert that there is a direct correlation between the number of DeMarco essays your work-mates find depressingly accurate and the degree of managerial self-delusion within the organization. The first essay, from which the book draws its title, will immediately give you a sense of DeMarco's irreverent and iconoclastic style.

"'Why does software cost so much?' is not a question at all; it's an assertion. The assertion is that software is too pricey. The person who poses this rhetorical question may seem to be motivated by mere intellectual curiosity: 'Gee, I've always wondered, just why is it that software costs so much?' The real motivation, however, has nothing to do with curiosity. It has only to do with getting the brutal assertion on the table. It's a negotiating position."

Of the 24 essays in Why Does Software Cost So Much?, twenty have been published previously elsewhere, including three in previous issues of American Programmer. However, it's unlikely that the average software professional has seen them all before; and there are four previously unpublished essays for the fanatical DeMarco fans of the world. The cover a range of topics, from estimating and scheduling, to managing people and building teams. DeMarco looks at software factories, structured analysis, and documentation strategies; and he examines the generic concept of "software engineering" from a variety of critical perspectives. The full set of essays are as follows:

• Why Does Software Cost So Much?
• Mad About Measurement
• Management-Aided Software Engineering
• Lean and Mean
• Standing Naked in the Snow (Variation on a Theme by Yamaura)
• If We Did Only One Thing to Improve ...
• Desktop Video: A Tutorial
• Nontechnological Issues in Software Engineering
• Challenge of the '90s: The Schools
• Software Development: State of the Art vs. State of the Practice
• Software Productivity: The Covert Agenda
• Taking a Second Look at the Software Factory
• The Choir and the Team
• Icons
• On Naming a Company
• Use of Video for Program Documentation
• Structured Analysis: The Beginnings of a New Discipline
• The First Pastist Pronouncement
• The Second Pastist Pronouncement
• Twenty Years of Software Engineering: Looking Forward, Looking Back
• Rock and Roll and Cola War
• Something of Myself
• Pasta e Fagioli
• Existence Modeling