RESOURCE: WHITE PAPER

Software Development’s Classic Mistakes

Classic mistakes are ineffective software development practices that have been chosen so often by so many projects with such predictable results that they deserve to be called classic mistakes. Steve McConnell first introduced this concept in Rapid Development in 1996. We’ve updated McConnell’s original list of classic mistakes and conducted a survey to assess the prevalence and impact of these mistakes. This white paper shares the survey’s results—both expected and surprising—and analyzes its findings.