Yeah, I was going to say that - the difference between the rigorous research in aviation/medicine and most software projects can be measured in dead bodies. Th

Yeah, I was going to say that - the difference between the rigorous research in aviation/medicine and most software projects can be measured in dead bodies. There's plenty of software that really matters though, in the same way that using checklists and things makes sense in environments where you won't kill people. We could all learn something if someone researched using, for example, an Agile methodology for building the F-35's flight control software, for example! Edit: Thinking about this some more, I suppose my point is how to measure this: > a company that was really rigorous and disciplined and as a consequence a bit slower might well be out-competed by a company that's run in a bit more 'fast and loose' way while correcting for other factors like marketing etc. You can measure how quickly a group of people will get off an aircraft and vary things like the dimensions of the exit row to test whether your change has improved things but you can't, e.g., re-run a project with TDD and test whether it was "better" (defining "better" in the first place is hard enough!)