Software quality´s eight greatest myths

The software quality community has become too satisfied with the “state of the practice”. We face the same problems today that we did a decade ago, but now the urgency for solutions is greater. Our present dilemma can be best explained by walking through the past decade´s major software quality trends and their associated myths. By myths, I refer to the claims used to support the numerous software quality “silver bullets” that flourished and faded in the past decade. Although I could add lesser items to my list, I consider the following eight as the main culprits (because these fads are hard to compare fairly and quantitatively, they appear in no particular order): (1) software process improvement and maturity; (2) formal methods; (3) programming languages and object-oriented design; (4) software metrics and measurement; (5) software standards; (6) software testing; (7) computer-aided software engineering; and (8) total quality management