Software Crisis

In start to read about the software crisis and I found this article quite interesting. The problems of the software development planet are responsible for most of the project failures that force managements worldwide to put more rigid processes in place to ensure compliance. Is there a crisis at all? As you stroll through the aisles of neatly packaged software in your favorite computer discount store, it wouldn’t occur to you that there’s a problem. You may be surprised to learn that those familiar aisles of software represent only a small share of the software market--of the $90 Billion software market, a mere 10% of software products are "shrink wrapped" packages for personal computers. The remaining 90% of the market is comprised of large software products developed to specific customer specifications.
By today’s definition, a "large" software system is a system that contains more than 50,000 lines of high-level language code. It’s those large systems that bring the software crisis to light. If you’re familiar with large software development projects, you know that the work is done in teams consisting of project managers, requirements analysts, software engineers, documentation experts, and programmers.

http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/1999/july99/crisis.htm