The Rational Planning of (Software) Projects

The software crisis has persisted for decades. Our difficulties in planning and managing software projects may be rooted in fundamental human nature, as suggested by research in rational decision making, more than in the inherent difficulty of building software. The Capability Maturity ModelSM for Software, an application of the concepts of Total Quality Management to software development and maintenance, embodies one approach for improving the software process. The problems addressed by both the CMMSM and TQM seem to lie in the basic ways that human beings think and organize themselves. In many circumstances, normal human decision making can be characterized as “irrational” because of systematic biases and fallacies in the way people make decisions. Mechanisms such as those suggested by the CMM support rational decision making.