Economics is called the Dismal Science. Economics is the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. Economics is generally about behaviors of humans and markets, given the scarcity of means, arises to achieve certain ends.
How does economics apply to software development? We're not a market, we don't create wealth, at least directly, we create products and services that may create wealth. Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and their decision making on the allocation of limited resources. It's the scarcity of resources that is the basis of Microeconomics. Software development certainly operates in the presence of scarce resources. MicroEconomics is closer to what we need to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty. The general economics processes ae of litle interest, so starting with Big Picture Econ books is not much use.
Software economics is a subset of Engineering Economics. A key aspect of all Microeconomics applied to engineering problems is the application of Statistical Decisions Theory - making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. Uncertainty comes in two types:
- Aleatory uncertainty - the naturally occurring variances in the underlying processes.
- Epistemic uncertainty - the lack of information about a probabilistic event in the future.
Aleatory uncertainty can be addressed by adding margin to our work. Time and Money. Epistemic uncertainty and the missing information has economic value to our decision making processes. That is there is economic value in decision based problems in the presence of uncertainty.
This missing information can be bought down with simple solutions. Prototypes for example. Short deliverables to test an idea or confirm an approach. Both are the basis of Agile and have been discussed in depth in Software Engineering Economics, Barry Boehm, Prentice Hall. 1981.
Engineering economics is the application of economic techniques to the evaluation of design and engineering alternatives. Engineering economics assesses the appropriateness of a given project, estimates of its value, and justification of the project (or product) from an engineering standpoint.
This involves the time value of money and cash-flow concepts, - compound and continuous interest. It continues with economic practices and techniques used to evaluate and optimize decisions on selection of strategies for project success.
When I hear I read that book and it's about counting lines of code, the reader has failed to comprehend the difference between principles and practices. The section of Statistical Decision theory are about the Expected Value of Perfect Information and how to make decisions with Imperfect information.
Statistical Decision Theory is about making choice, identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision. In Statistical Decision Theory, the underlying statistical processes and the resulting Probabilistic outcomes require us to Estimate in the presence of uncertainty.
Writing software for money, other people's money requires us to estimate how much money, when we'll be done spending that money and what will result from that spend.
This is the foundation of the Microeconomics of Software Development
If there is no scarcity of resources - time, cost, technical performance - then estimating is not necessary. Just start the work, spend the money and you'll be done when you're done. If however
