Across disciplines: risk, design, method, process, and tools

In the search for solutions to make software development more predictable and controllable, one often looks for parallels in other disciplines such as architecture, bridge construction, and so on. The article looks at software development from the perspective of the electrical industry. Inspired by their management tradition, ATH techniek b.v. has learned to apply proven management techniques to software development. Simple and commonsense principles yield excellent results; for instance, developers reduced risk by estimating project effort using two different measures and by controlling execution. Comparing the software development processes with what goes on in the rest of the company or another application domain can be instructive.