Tom DeMarco

"Systems engineering as an approach and methodology grew in response to the increase size and complexity of systems and projects... This engineering approach to the management of complexity by modularization was re-deployed in the software engineering discipline in the 1960s and 1970s with a proliferation of structured methodologies that enabled the the analysis, design and development of information systems by using techniques for modularized description, design and development of system components. Yourdon and DeMarco's Structured Analysis and Design, SSADM, James Martin's Information Engineering, and Jackson's Structured Design and Programming are examples from this era. They all exploited modularization to enable the parallel development of data, process, functionality and performance components of large software systems. The development of object orientation in the 1990s exploited modularization to develop reusable software. The idea was to develop modules that could be mixed and matched like Lego bricks to deliver to a variety of whole system specifications. The modularization and reusability principles have stood the test of time and are at the heart of modern software development."

"Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it."

"While the machines have changed enormously, the business of software development has been rather static."

"The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work."

"You can't control what you can't measure"

"The business of software building isn't really high-tech at all. It's most of all a business of talking to each other and writing things down. Those who were making major contributions to the field were more likely to be its best communicators than its best technicians."

"It's not what you don't know that kills you but what you know that isn't so."

"A day lost at the beginning of project hurts just as much as a day lost at the end."

"People under pressure don’t work better; they just work faster."

"Straff und taff ist eine Formel, zu der in gescheiterten Unternehmen die Leute greifen, die für das Scheitern verantwortlich sind"

"Nicht das, was wir nicht wissen, bringt uns zu Fall, sondern das, was wir fälschlicherweise zu wissen glauben."

"Jeder von uns glaubt insgeheim, er oder sie sei im Vergleich zu den anderern unterdurchschnittlich intelligent, und müsse das durch vermehrte Anstrengung ausgleichen. (...) Wenn wir uns durch einen Morast von Komplexität (...) hindurcharbeiten, lassen uns unsere Selbstzweifel glauben, dass alle anderen Leser der Spezifikation verstehen, was sie lesen."