The Real Cost of Bad Software Quality in the U.S. in 2022

July, 2023

Abstract

This presentation will introduce The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2022 Report, published in December 2022 by CISQ. We highlight the rapidly growing costs of cybersecurity failures and software technical debt. The trends and enablers of these growing costs are discussed.

CISQ’s 2020 report estimated that poor software quality cost the United States economy over $2 trillion in 2020 due to operational software failures, poor quality legacy systems, and unsuccessful projects. Compared to the country’s projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $20.66 trillion, or the $1.4 trillion spent on employing IT/software professionals in 2020, it represents a staggering amount of wasted resources. This talk will share the updated results from 2022.

Author, Herb Krasner, will introduce the important findings in the report, which is full of facts, figures, case histories, references, and specific recommendations for how and where to find these burdensome costs and how to prevent or avoid them.

About the Presenter 

Herb Krasner

Since early 2017, Herb has had the luxury of getting involved in whatever sparks his interest or is stimulated by his professional expertise/contacts.  This led to his publication of the Cost of Poor-Quality Software in the US: A 2018 report, widely read and cited on the internet. This report has since stimulated podcasts, blogs, webinars, and other related opportunities. 

In 2017, Herb retired from his 18-year position as Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where he taught undergraduate and graduate classes in software engineering, database engineering, agile methods, and software quality and process improvement. He also performed and supervised research in the science of software design, the economics of software engineering, and software quality/process improvement.  

As a research scientist, he is well known for his leading-edge work on modeling the cost/benefits of software quality and reporting the ROI data for software process improvement programs, as well as the reported results from his groundbreaking empirical studies of professional programmers performed at MCC.   He has published over 55 papers, articles, and book sections, and has spoken at many professional conferences and meetings.   As founder, Chairman, and former Director of the Software Quality Institute (SQI) at the University of Texas, he was largely responsible for creating and shaping the software engineering educational outreach organization into a successful business entity.  

Herb currently serves on the Missouri S&T Computer Science Department’s Academy of Computer Science. and is an Advisory Board Member for the Consortium for IT Software Quality He is active in both the ACM and IEEE Computer Society, and served as past chairman of several international conferences, as well as Director of the ACM Scholastic Student Programming Contest. He was a book series editor for the IEEE Computer Society Press and a member of their Publications Board. His professional awards include the ACM Distinguished Service Award and ASQ Golden Quill Award.

Past Presentations

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