Defining and measuring software development output A light at the end of the tunnel for an essential problem

The workshop's website raises the interesting question of whether the original "No Silver Bullet" article [2] was optimistic, pessimistic, or sadly, realistic. This position paper follows the direction presented in David Harel's paper [3]: although we agree with many of its individual points, the paper present a far gloomier assessment of the situation than seems appropriate. In other words, we believe Brooks' paper, although raising important and valuable points, to be too pessimistic in its conclusions.