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The Economics of Software Quality 1st Edition

by Capers Jones (Author), Olivier Bonsignour (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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“Whether consulting, working on projects, or teaching, whenever I need credible, detailed, relevant metrics and insights into the current capabilities and performance of the software engineering profession, I always turn first to Capers Jones’ work. In this important new book, he and Olivier Bonsignour make the hard-headed, bottom-line, economic case, with facts and data, about why software quality is so important. I know I’ll turn to this excellent reference again and again.”

—Rex Black, President, RBCS

Poor quality continues to bedevil large-scale development projects, but few software leaders and practitioners know how to measure quality, select quality best practices, or cost-justify their usage. In The Economics of Software Quality, leading software quality experts Capers Jones and Olivier Bonsignour show how to systematically measure the economic impact of quality and how to use this information to deliver far more business value.

Using empirical data from hundreds of software organizations, Jones and Bonsignour show how integrated inspection, structural quality measurement, static analysis, and testing can achieve defect removal rates exceeding 95 percent. They offer innovative guidance for predicting and measuring defects and quality; choosing defect prevention, pre-test defect removal, and testing methods; and optimizing post-release defect reporting and repair.

This book will help you

  • Move beyond functional quality to quantify non-functional and structural quality
  • Prove that improved software quality translates into strongly positive ROI and greatly reduced TCO
  • Drive better results from current investments in Quality Assurance and Testing
  • Use quality improvement techniques to stay on schedule and on budget
  • Avoid “hazardous” metrics that lead to poor decisions
Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0132582201
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0132582209
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Addison-Wesley Professional
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 2011
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  8. Print length
    587 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book provides the best treatment on the subject of economics of software quality that I’ve seen. Peppered with valuable industry data, in-depth analysis, empirical methods for quality improvement, and economic analysis of quality, this book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in this subject. With the many real-life and up-to-date examples and stories linking software quality to daily-life activities, readers will find this book an enjoyable read.”

–Stephen H. Kan, Senior Technical Staff Member and Program Manager, Software Quality–IBM Systems and Technology Group, and author of Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering

“Finally, a book that defines the cost and economics of software quality and their relationship to business value. Facts such as the inability of testing alone to produce quality software, the value of engineering-in quality, and the positive ROI are illustrated in compelling ways. Additionally, this book is a mustread for understanding, managing, and eliminating ‘technical debt’ from software systems.”

–Dan Galorath, CEO, Galorath Incorporated & SEER by Galorath

“Congrats to Capers and Olivier as they release their relevant, extensive, and timely research on the costs of defects in today’s software industry. The authors don’t stop with the causes of defects; they explore injection points, removal, and prevention approaches to avoid the ‘technical mortgage’ associated with defective software products. In today’s ‘quick-to-market’ world, an emphasis on strengthening the engineering in software engineering is refreshing. If you’re a software developer, manager, student, or user, this book will challenge your perspective on software quality. Many thanks!”

–Joe Schofield, Sandia National Laboratories; Vice President, IFPUG; CQA, CFPS, CSMS, LSS BB, SEI-certified instructor

“This masterpiece of a book will empower those who invest in software–and the businesses and products that depend on it–to do so wisely. It is a groundbreaking work that rigorously applies principles of finance, economics, management, quality, and productivity to scrutinize holistically the value propositions and myths underlying the vast sums invested in software. A mustread if you want to get your money’s worth from your software investments.”

–Leon A. Kappelman, Professor of Information Systems, College of Business, University of North Texas

“Capers Jones is the foremost leader in the software industry today for software metrics. The Economics of Software Quality is a comprehensive, data-rich study of challenges of quality software across the many application domains. It is an essential read for software quality professionals who wish to better understand the challenges they face and the cost and effectiveness of potential solutions. It is clear that much research and thought has been put into this.”

–Maysa-Maria Peterson Lach, Senior Principal Software Engineer, Raytheon Missile Systems

“In no other walk of life do we resist the necessity and validity of precise, rigorous measurement, as software practitioners have so vigorously resisted for more than fifty years. Capers Jones took up the challenge of bringing sanity and predictability to software production more than three decades ago, and now with Olivier Bonsignour, he brings forth his latest invaluable expression of confidence in applying standard engineering and economic discipline to what too often remains the ‘Wild, Wild West’ of software development.”

–Douglas Brindley, President & CEO, Software Productivity Research, LLC

About the Author

Capers Jones, President/CEO of Capers Jones & Associates LLC, founded Software Productivity Research LLC (SPR), where he remains Chief Scientist Emeritus. One of the software engineering field’s most influential thought leaders, his books include Patterns of Software Systems Failure and Success; Applied Software Measurement, Third Edition; and Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices. Jones is a Distinguished Advisor to the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ).

Olivier Bonsignour, Vice President of Product Development at CAST, is responsible for R&D and product management. Prior to CAST he was CIO at the Advanced Research Division of the French Defense Ministry. An early pioneer in distributed systems and object oriented development, Bonsignour holds advanced engineering and management degrees from top institutions in France.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (January 1, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 587 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0132582201
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0132582209
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

About the author

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Capers Jones

Capers Jones

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Capers Jones is vice president and Chief Technology Officer of Namcook Analytics LLC. His web site is www.Namcook.com. Namcook Analytics designs and builds advanced software risk, quality, and cost prediction tools.

Capers Jones is working on his 15th book, The Technical and Social History of Software Engeering, to be published by Addison Wesley in 2013.

Capers Jones was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He later attended the University of Florida in Gainesville.

While working for the U.S. Public Health Service as an editor, he had an opportunity to learn programming. He then became a programmer/analyst and worked on software applications for hospital administration.

In 1965 he moved to corporate industry as a systems analyst for Crane Company. Two years later he joined IBM in Boulder, Colorado. At IBM he became interested in software estimating, and developed a proprietary estimating tool for IBM with Dr. Charles Turk. After both management and research positions in IBM, he was invited to join a new software laboratory being created by the ITT Corporation in Stratford, Connecticut. As assistant director of measurements he was part of the company's first software measurement program.

In 1984 he founded Software Productivity Research (SPR), and began to develop commercial software estimating tools. SPQR/20 in 1984 was the first commercial estimating tool based on function point metrics. Allan Albrecht, the inventor of function points, joined SPR after retiring from IBM. While at SPR Allan developed the first certification exam for function point analysis.

Capers first software management book was Programming Productivity: Issues for the Eighties, published by the IEEE Computer Society Press in 1979. He has now published more than a dozen books on software management topics including Estimating Software Costs, 2nd edition, McGraw Hilll 2007; Applied Software Measurement 3rd edition, McGraw Hill, 2008; and Software Engineering Best Practices, McGraw Hill, 2010. His next book will be The Economics of Software Quality with Jitendra Subramanyam as co author. It will be published by Addison Wesley later in 2011.

In 2006 Capers switched genres and published a history book entitled "The History and Future of Narragansett Bay." This book covers the geology, ecology, and settlement of the Bay region from before the last ice age through modern times. It also discusses the Native Americans who lived and still live near the Bay, and the settlement history of 18 Bay towns. Economic and political topics are also included.

His current research topics include early, high-speed sizing of software applications; improving software quality control, and improving software risk and value analysis prior to funding major applications. He is also working on expanding function points to included "data points" for sizing data bases and "value point" for integrating financial and non-financial value topics.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

JFA
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book !
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2012
Verified Purchase
This book is a a precious and amazing piece of work. It includes hundreds of statistics and real world metrics, organized by project type, project size, technology, methodology, etc...
Statistics range from defect density to common quality tools and processes defect removal efficiency.
I do not know any source of information that come even close to this one.
Precious corpus for anybody dealing with Software quality and outsourcing contracts.
And a great book for anybody dealing with software in general !
Expected all my expectations on the subject...
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Great reference
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2012
Verified Purchase
I am quoting from this book on a regular basis. It's been instrumental to illustrate and help me make my case.
One person found this helpful
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Emerson Rios
5.0 out of 5 stars Software Quality
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2012
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I liked very much this book. Caper Jones is one of my best authors. Everyone worried about software quality should read it.
One person found this helpful
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Janet Rice
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Resource for Quantifying Software Quality
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2011
In this book, authors Capers Jones and Olivier Bonsignour quantify the factors that influence software quality and provide information for people to gain insight into how their projects might compare to others. The measurements in this book are based on thousands of software projects.

One of my frequent complaints about the software industry is that we just don't measure very many things. However, thankfully there are people like Jones and Bonsignour that do have a rich source of metrics from enough projects that we can learn from them.

Capers Jones has long been considered the source for software quality metrics. To me, Capers is the "numbers guy" of our profession. With over 40 years in the field, Jones has a wealth of information he has maintained and published over many years.

Olivier Bonsignour is responsible for Research & Development and Product Management in a continual effort to build the world's most advanced Application Intelligence technology. Prior to joining CAST, Mr. Bonsignour was the CIO for DGA, the advanced research division of the French Ministry of Defense.

For example, the authors state that "high quality levels are invariable associated with shorter-than-average development schedules and lower-than-average development costs." This finding is based on over 13,000 projects between 1973 and today.

The authors maintain that the real economic value of high quality software is not the cost to fix defects, but rather:

* the reduced likelihood of canceled projects
* the reduced risk of litigation
* shortened development schedules
* lower development costs
* reduced warranty costs
* increased customer satisfaction

This book addresses:

* What is software quality and how do we define its value?
* How can we estimate and measure software quality?
* How can software defects be prevented?
* How can we find and remove defects before testing?
* What are effective ways to test software and measure its effectiveness?
* What is the current state of post-delivery software defects?
* How do projects of various characteristics (low, average and high-quality) compare?
* How can technical debt be addressed from a business value perspective?

You will find a multitude of data from projects in a variety of industries, at various levels of quality, and at various levels of practice maturity. You will see by the numbers which project approaches work and which ones don't work very well.

By reading this book, you will gain insight not only into the current state of software quality, but you will also learn about measurement and metrics of software. These are critical things for any software quality professional to learn. In fact, after reading this book, you will know more about software measurement than 95% (that's my estimate) of testers and QA professionals.

I highly recommend this book, not only as a guide for software quality efforts, but also a benchmark for your own efforts.
15 people found this helpful
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Donald P. Sweitzer
4.0 out of 5 stars On of the better books explaining the facts behind the quantitative part of ...
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2014
On of the better books explaining the facts behind the quantitative part of qa. it really gets to the why we are doing what we are doing.highly recommended.
One person found this helpful
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Walker Royce
5.0 out of 5 stars An encyclopedia of Software Quality Data
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2011
Capers Jones and Olivier Bonsignour have authored a very useful book that will help the software industry make more objective decisions and improve the economic outcomes of software delivery organizations. This book is loaded with data, benchmarks and cause-and-effect relationships for reasoning about how to improve software quality. It is not an easy read because it goes both deep and broad across the diverse contexts of software domains and across the life-cycle practices of software development. This book is a great place to start when looking for credible and objective benchmark data to build a business case or defend a proposal for improving software quality or productivity.

The economics of software quality is an attractive topic all by itself. However, the book delivers unexpected value on two other fronts. First, the presentation and discussion of substantial data provides an educational framework for quantitative reasoning with enlightening discussions on cause and effect as well as cautions on potential misinterpretation. Second, the well-integrated history lessons throughout give the reader a good feel for the improvement trends, or lack of improvement trends, across the software industry.

Decades of experience, compiled into an encyclopedia of facts and figures. Well worth the price.
12 people found this helpful
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Lonnie Franks
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Data
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2014
Some off the material is different than previous works, but having so much data is amazingly helpful.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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CHills
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for all software developers (even if there isn't a ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
Essential for all software developers (even if there isn't a line of code in it)
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Olga Pérez
5.0 out of 5 stars Una lectura recomendada para todo Ingeniero de software.
Reviewed in Mexico on October 3, 2016
Verified Purchase
Exelente trabajo del Dr. Jones. Muy completo y claro. Lo recomiendo para cursos de Calidad de Sofware a nivel universitario y/o Postgrado.
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MMT
3.0 out of 5 stars But good to go through it once
Reviewed in India on June 26, 2015
Verified Purchase
I found it kind of ok. But good to go through it once atleast
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Ben C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Information
Reviewed in Germany on October 21, 2013
Verified Purchase
The Economics of Software Quality provides an excellent summary of software quality from an economical perspective, covering not just software testing methods, but also things such as reviews and inspections, not just of code but also requirements, as well as various development methodologies, such as pair-programming and Kaizen.

The book contains a vast amount of quantitative information that has been gathered by the authors at hundreds of clients over the last decade(s). Most books on software quality are argumentative, not empirical, making this book unique (to my knowledge). Although the authors explain throughout this book how software quality can be measured, they don't always describe in detail how they actually gathered and prepared the data shown in this book - an appendix on how they did this would have been nice. However, the authors do analyze and critique their own data, for example in cases were sample sizes were small or causality was unclear, so the reader is told not to blindly accept every statistic as a hard fact.

The writing is excellent, however there were a few areas where it didn't flow too well: in particular, the important concept of function points is often mentioned throughout the book, but only explained in chunks scattered throughout the chapters. I would have found it helpful if the concept had been explained fully at the beginning of the book, as function points were new to me.

Overall, an excellent book, one that in my opinion everyone in the software industry should read, managers as well as developers.
One person found this helpful
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Richard D
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2015
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Useful as a means of demonstrating that, yes software quality has value and needs to be given due consideration.
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