Economics of Software Engineering

TI2011

Digital analytics data visualization, financial schedule, monitor screen in perspective

Is very common to see how engineers get amazed about new software, computers, gadget, tools and everything related to technology, that is what make them who they are. However, now days in the industry that is not enough to become a manager in a big company, you need to know real stuff about development of a process, like finance, efficiency, cash flow and decision-making process, otherwise your product could be the best on the market that is going to offer world peace, but if you do not know how administrate the economy of the project form the beginning to the end, the only thing that you are going to produce is going to be a huge debt.

Knowing this concepts and methodology is kind of hard because it change everything about what you see in a project like engineer, because normally you want to create a new software so you think about how many programmers you are going to need, how many computers and servers are going to required, so you make a list with the best people for the job and the best equipment without knowing that no one is going to accept the project for all the money that is going to be needed for your request, so in this point is where a good manager arrives and make you realize that at first you do not need all this people and equipment, first you can start with only 3 persons and one server, while you get more advanced you can get more computer systems and people to work, but first you have to be sure that the project is going to keep alive until the delivery and that is what engineers sometimes does not see.

For this reason understand what is the cost of keeping a project alive is essential to knowing in what are you going to spend your budget and your time.

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References:

Swebokwiki.org. 2015. Chapter 12: Software Engineering Economics – SWEBOK. [online] Available at: <http://swebokwiki.org/Chapter_12:_Software_Engineering_Economics&gt; [Accessed 20 January 2020].

2016. [online] Available at: <https://www.quora.com/Why-is-studying-economics-important-for-software-engineers&gt; [Accessed 20 February 2020].