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The Boeing Company invested nearly $10 billion in developing the new 777 The Voting software cost $60K I believe, that includes distribution. That about sums

The Boeing Company invested nearly $10 billion in developing the new 777 The Voting software cost $60K I believe, that includes distribution. That about sums it up for me, if you want reliable software it costs a lot of money.

alexbanks 7y ago
Money, time and planning. Agile is, for the most part, the absence of planning. "Figuring it out quickly and changing it if we need to." But, by design, most "physical" engineering tasks require tremendous planning, and include (from what I understand) very little "Just figure it out as we go." The reason for a lack of planning, is because tremendous planning increases time to ship, which effectively costs money.
- chadcmulligan 7y ago
  Yes, planning, lots of code reviews, lots of testing. Building your software so it can be tested. Its all doable but no one wants to spend the money - and if its not critical its good enough. I've read with the space shuttle every line of code was reviewed in a meeting - its described here https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html
- tootie 7y ago
  Agile is not the absence of planning. It's about adapting to change. When it comes to business software this makes sense because the end result is typically unknown. Aircraft avionics have a pretty well-defined end goal. The other big difference is really quality control. Most software doesn't invest heavily in quality because a failure isn't that costly. It's the same calculation that goes into producing absolutely everything. The cost of a quality failure in an airplane is humongous. I use apps that crash at least once a day, but I just restart them and keep going.
  - alexbanks 7y ago
    Yeah I guess I just very much do not agree with your stance on Agile, but that's okay. YMMV.
- tasubotadas 7y ago
  >Agile is, for the most part, the absence of planning That's just blatantly false. Agile is about adjusting to the changing environment. Even wiki says: "Agile software development comprises various approaches to software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer(s)/end user(s)."
  - alexbanks 7y ago
    I guess, on paper Agile's wiki may define itself as being "pro-adjustment", but I think in practice it's been pretty well-proven to be a "just plan less" approach. You can take a positive spin on "We'll just figure it out iteratively as we go", but I think ultimately you get orders of magnitude less actual "planning" by kicking the can down the road. YMMV though, as with everything.
jussij 7y ago
firstly that $10 billion covers many more cost items than just the software needed to fly the 777. And going by recent events (i.e. 737 MCAS) it would appear Boeing is not that great at creating reliable software.
- chadcmulligan 7y ago
  Yes software is seldom broken out - the space shuttle software spent $200 million, with an original estimate of $20 Million according to https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html. I guess thats in 1970-1980 dollars
  - jussij 7y ago
    For the 777 it would be even harder to break out a software only a number only because while there will be new lines of code written there will also be many more old lines of code reused from earlier models.

alexbanks 7y ago

Money, time and planning. Agile is, for the most part, the absence of planning. "Figuring it out quickly and changing it if we need to." But, by design, most "physical" engineering tasks require tremendous planning, and include (from what I understand) very little "Just figure it out as we go." The reason for a lack of planning, is because tremendous planning increases time to ship, which effectively costs money.

chadcmulligan 7y ago
Yes, planning, lots of code reviews, lots of testing. Building your software so it can be tested. Its all doable but no one wants to spend the money - and if its not critical its good enough. I've read with the space shuttle every line of code was reviewed in a meeting - its described here https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html
tootie 7y ago
Agile is not the absence of planning. It's about adapting to change. When it comes to business software this makes sense because the end result is typically unknown. Aircraft avionics have a pretty well-defined end goal. The other big difference is really quality control. Most software doesn't invest heavily in quality because a failure isn't that costly. It's the same calculation that goes into producing absolutely everything. The cost of a quality failure in an airplane is humongous. I use apps that crash at least once a day, but I just restart them and keep going.
- alexbanks 7y ago
  Yeah I guess I just very much do not agree with your stance on Agile, but that's okay. YMMV.
tasubotadas 7y ago
>Agile is, for the most part, the absence of planning That's just blatantly false. Agile is about adjusting to the changing environment. Even wiki says: "Agile software development comprises various approaches to software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer(s)/end user(s)."
- alexbanks 7y ago
  I guess, on paper Agile's wiki may define itself as being "pro-adjustment", but I think in practice it's been pretty well-proven to be a "just plan less" approach. You can take a positive spin on "We'll just figure it out iteratively as we go", but I think ultimately you get orders of magnitude less actual "planning" by kicking the can down the road. YMMV though, as with everything.

jussij 7y ago

firstly that $10 billion covers many more cost items than just the software needed to fly the 777. And going by recent events (i.e. 737 MCAS) it would appear Boeing is not that great at creating reliable software.

chadcmulligan 7y ago
Yes software is seldom broken out - the space shuttle software spent $200 million, with an original estimate of $20 Million according to https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html. I guess thats in 1970-1980 dollars
- jussij 7y ago
  For the 777 it would be even harder to break out a software only a number only because while there will be new lines of code written there will also be many more old lines of code reused from earlier models.