Understanding software engineering with equations

In order to escape the common traps of software development, teams and managers need to understand the consequences of their decisions - they need to understand the dynamics of software engineering. This is not an easy task and we need solid help. We need maths!

In this talk I explore a few equations that describe dynamics in software engineering, which can help us see the forest from the trees. I also cover some modern practices - and show how software engineers can get back control of their delivery.

The problems addressed include:

• Deadlocked by Dependencies: Inability to deliver due to waiting on something
• Code-Degeneration: Code changes become more difficult over time
• Congestion: Slow, unpredictable delivery even though we are very busy
• Firefighting: We know what we should do, but we don’t have time to improve