ACM Tech Talk: Tradeoffs in the Software Workflow

A few takeaways from this talk:

1. Workflow cost optimization has many inputs and constraints, and good solutions come up gradually when considering the tradeoffs between time, cost and risk.

2. The overall goal should be reducing the aggregate of defect costs over time.

3. Human effort is the universal unit of cost and benefit.

4. Software engg is 50 years old, best practices are still being figured out. Best practices are changing, and we need to continuously measure and make progress on making them better.

5. Software engg is not the same as programming, avoid hyperbolic discounting and focus on building things that last.