There Are 2.08 Trillion Reasons to Build Better Software>
The Startup – Medium – Taylor Armerding
A report released last week by the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), and cosponsored by Synopsys, titled âThe Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report,â sets that cost at a staggering $2.08 trillion over the past year â more than the GDP of all but a dozen countries. And that doesnât even count an estimated $1.31 trillion in âtechnical debtâ â accumulated software vulnerabilities in applications, networks and systems that have never been addressed. The report says that debt has been increasing at a rate of 14% since 2018. It isnât added to the $2.08 trillion because it applies to future costs, not those from the past year. Still, that debt will have to be paid eventually. If there is any marginally encouraging news in the report, it is that last yearâs cost of poor software quality (CPSQ) is slightly less than CISQâs 2018 estimate, originally put at $2.8 trillion but revised down to $2.1 trillion. There are three primary causes of those losses: The large majority (75%) of the CPSQ is software failure due to the failure to patch known vulnerabilities. Second, at $520 billion, are legacy system problems, although that figure has declined from $635 billion two years ago. Third, at $260 billion, are unsuccessful development projects. And that number is trending the wrong way â itâs up 46% since 2018. While there are multiple factors causing project failures, âone consistent theme has been the lack of attention to quality,â the report said, noting that organizations are not very good at âthe balancing actâ required to maintain quality and security in a DevOps environment. First, as numerous experts have been saying for most of the past decade, the software âattack surfaceâ is explosively expanding. Second, itâs more expensive â by a factor of as much as 10 â to fix software defects after a product has been released than to find and fix them during development.
Link: https://medium.com/swlh/there-are-2-08-trillion-reasons-to-build-better-software-aec895ea564b