Managing software development to cost and schedule

The author reviews the approach and experiences in managing software development to cost and schedule on the survivable adaptive planning experiment (SAPE) program. SAPE was an Air Force Systems Command-Rome Laboratory program initiated to demonstrate the applicability of advanced computer and communications technology to the problem of quickly producing and maintaining the nation´s strategic nuclear weapons plan. An overview of the program is followed by a discussion of the program challenges and experiences including a review of the software development model and management approach. The performance of the SAPE program was a remarkable achievement in that over 970 K source lines of code was successfully developed, integrated and demonstrated over a two year time period by a staff that peaked at approximately 50 personnel. The SAPE program success together with experience on and observations of a number of other projects to build large, complex software systems confirm that the correlation between success and failure for these systems is due to the engineering process chosen, i.e., the software development model, and the management process