Software Engineering sorpassato?

Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?
Tom DeMarco, IEEE Software, July/August 2009

Quanto è importante, quanto decisivo il ruolo delle metriche e dei sistemi di controllo per il successo di un progetto? DeMarco rianalizza uno dei suoi testi più influenti, Controlling Software Projects, del 1982, e ne critica l'impostazione globale.

"The book for me is a curious combination of generally true things written on every page but combined into an overall message that’s wrong.
It’s as though the book’s young author had never met a metric he didn’t like. The book’s deep message seems to be, metrics are good, more would be better, and most would be best. [...]

I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that software engineering is an idea whose time has come and gone. I still believe it makes excellent sense to engineer software. But that isn’t exactly what software engineering has come to mean. The term encompasses a specific set of disciplines including defined process, inspections and walkthroughs, requirements engineering, traceability matrices, metrics, precise quality control, rigorous planning and tracking, and coding and documentation standards. All these strive for consistency of practice and predictability.
Consistency and predictability are still desirable, but they haven’t ever been the most important things."