Silver Pellets for Improving Software Quality

In his timeless article, Fred Brooks asserted that the essential difficulties of developing software would continue to ensure the futility of any search for a “silver bullet” to reproduce (for software engineering) the catalytic effects that electronics, transistors, and large-scale integration had on computer hardware development. Since his article, software development has become even more difficult and organizations have magnified the struggle to overcome what has been called “the software crisis.” There is unlikely to be a silver bullet, but this article discusses a variety of user-centered and process-oriented systems delivery methods, philosophies, and techniques available to the software engineering community, that may be used in innovative permutations to tranquilize the dragon of poor software quality. The context for the applicability of these approaches and some advantages and weaknesses where indicated in the research literature or gleaned from practitioner accounts are also discussed.