For companies where software is important to business operations and to the products that they market, excellence in software is a vital business goal. However, software has long been one of the most troublesome technologies of the 20th century, and one that has long been resistant to executive control One of the main reasons that software is difficult to control is because it has been difficult to estimate software projects and to measure software quality and productivity in an accurate way. — Capers Jones †
† “What It Means to be ‘Best in Class’ for Software,” Capers Jones, Software Productivity Research, Inc. February 1998. www.spr.com