Software crisis
Software crisis refers to a period in the history of software development when there was a gap between the demand for software and the ability to deliver it.
The main reasons for software crisis are:
1. Rapidly growing complexity of software systems: As software systems became more complex, the difficulty of managing and developing them increased. This made it difficult to deliver software projects on time, within budget, and with the desired quality.
2. Lack of project management: In the early days of software development, there was a lack of project management methodologies and tools, resulting in many software projects being poorly planned, managed, and executed.
3. Inadequate software engineering practices: Inadequate software engineering practices such as poor requirements gathering, design, coding, and testing, contributed to software crisis.
4. Immature software development tools: The software development tools in use during the early days of software development were not mature enough to support large and complex software systems.
The main reasons for higher software maintenance costs are:
1. Changing requirements: Changes in requirements are a major cause of higher software maintenance costs. As the requirements change, the software needs to be modified, which can be costly and time-consuming.
2. Poor software design: Poor software design can lead to a higher maintenance cost as the software becomes more complex and difficult to modify.
3. Lack of documentation: Inadequate or outdated documentation can increase the maintenance costs as it becomes difficult to understand and modify the software system.
4. Technology changes: Changes in technology can also increase the maintenance cost as the software needs to be updated to work with new technologies.
5. Software aging: As software systems age, they become more difficult to maintain, and the cost of maintaining them increases.
6. Poor testing and debugging: Inadequate testing and debugging can lead to higher maintenance costs as bugs and errors may be discovered later in the software development life cycle, requiring more time and resources to fix.