I am looking for the following fact. It seems that when they develop
software these days, they measure it in man years. So if you have a
team of 100 devlopers working on a project for 2 years, it tranlates
into 200 man years. I am looking for some fairly common programs that
took a real lot of time to develop. For instance Microsoft word, if
they were to now develop it from scratch, how long did it take? Or in
reality considering that each version builds on the one before it, how
long did it take in reality? The point that I am looking to bring out,
is that these programs are immensly complicated.
I must have the answer to this question by 2:00 PM today (NYC time) |
Clarification of Question by
barrys-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:20 PST
Even a short to the point couple of facts will help. Let's extend the
time to 4:00 PM, anyone out there want to make a quick few bucks?
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:32 PST
Hi, Barry.
I just started on this, and I know you're on a tight deadline, so I'm
going to just drop a few things out here, as I find them, in case you
can use them. If anything looks good to you, I can formulate an
official answer later.
For starters, this is interesting stuff:
"Software Realities
millions of lines of code
Space Shuttle -- 25 million lines of code
Air Traffic Controller -- 1 million lines of code
Citibank ATM -- 700,000 lines of code
IBM checkout scanner -- 90,000 lines of code
man-years of effort
Space Shuttle -- 22,000 man-years to develop
Air Traffic Controller -- 1600 man-years to write 500 to develop
no one person can understand it all
testing is costly, Lotus spent $15 million in testing a 400,000 line
program. Space shuttle testing cost $500 million or $1000 per line of
code.
impossible to fully test (100 inputs, , years to test at 100 per second)
discrete systems are brittle
hardware failures? (Blackhawk helicopter example/microwave interference)
Conclusion: Large software systems are riddled with bugs. Sometimes
surprising that they ever work."
http://www.cs.jcu.edu.au/ftp/web/teaching/Subjects/cp1500/1995/foils/may26/may26.html
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:37 PST
Here's a good one. This applies to the Law Enforcement Automated Database Software:
Upon complete review of LEADS software, an independent company
indicated that it would take 70 man-years to develop similar
software."
http://www.leadssoftware.com/leads_edge.html
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:41 PST
Here's a staggering claim regarding software called BusinessObjects Warehouse:
"IBD [Investor's Business Daily"]: What was the extent of your staff
commitment to this rewrite?
Liautaud [Bernard Liautaud, founder and chief executive of Business
Objects SA] : This took us close to 1,500 man-years to develop. We had
500 people working on it for the last three years."
http://www.businessobjects.com/news/in_the_press/investor_business_daily_2003apr30.asp
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:43 PST
"SoftTech Advantage (STA) president Emma V. Teodoro said developing
products require much time and capital. She cited that STA's year 2000
conversion tool, Fieldex, took 50 man-years to develop."
http://itmatters.com.ph/features/features_102798.html
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:46 PST
This concerns Microsoft's development of Windows NT operating system:
"There is approximately 4 to 5 million lines of code and 200 man-years
in the current generation of NT 4. Current estimates place Windows NT
5 around 30-40 million lines of code."
http://www.erenkrantz.com/Geeks/WhatIsNT.shtml
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:48 PST
On Sun's "Solaris" operating system:
"...Sun's Solaris, the result of tens of thousands of man-years in one
of the hotbeds of the industry."
http://www.trusted-components.org/documents/tc_original_paper.html
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:54 PST
About Microsoft's initial release of the Windows operating system:
"On November 10, 1983 Microsoft made the announcement that they were
going to be releasing a program named Windows. Then came, 'the big
delay.' The whole program was expected to take 6 man years to
complete. The programmers kept fiddling and changing things around and
it ended up taking 90 man years."
http://wwwshs1.bham.wednet.edu/curric/socst/wa/bill2.htm
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 12:56 PST
Whew. Gotta go now. Hope some of this helps! Please let me know if any
of my links were useful enough to qualify as an answer.
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
11 Feb 2004 13:30 PST
One more goodie:
"It took 10,000 man-years for Microsoft to develop Internet Explorer 3."
http://www.macnn.com/news/22939&startNumber=29
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Clarification of Question by
barrys-ga
on
12 Feb 2004 10:59 PST
Dear Pinkfreud. First off Hi. Secondly Thanks. I used some of these
facts in the lecture last night, and it was very helpful. If you could
put them together a little more, I would be very appreciative (And of
course it would be a great anwer.)
Thanks
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Request for Question Clarification by
pinkfreud-ga
on
12 Feb 2004 12:47 PST
I am glad that some of the items I found were useful. How many
additional links are you needing?
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