The original title is "Why Expensive Software Development Never Looks Expensive"

Short summary

The article argues that expensive software development is rarely traced to its true cause—structural architecture decisions—because every system is built once with no control group for comparison. It identifies how process goals (closing tickets, hitting coverage numbers) silently override product goals, inflating costs over time. The piece offers a practical framework for teams to audit whether their process is serving the product or substituting for it.

• •Software cost overruns are rarely traced to architecture decisions due to unfalsifiability—no control group exists
• •Process goals like sprint completion and test coverage metrics silently override product quality goals
• •Article provides a diagnostic framework to check if your team is optimizing process at the expense of the product

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.