Software Crisis
Iman Allie
3760502
3760502@myuwc.ac.za
ABSTRACT
This report covers the contributions towards the Software Crisis
of the 1960s as well as the solutions to overcome and prevent it
from happening again. I will also be discussing the Software
Engineering’s response and whether it was successful or not to
this day following the Software Crisis.
1 UNDERSTANDING SOFTWARE CRISIS
The term Software Crisis which originated in the late 1960s
describes the difficulty in writing effective computer programs on
time. This was due to the inabilities of not being able to solve
complex problems and the sudden increase in computer power.
The software crisis showcased problems such as, malfunctioning
of software systems, inefficient development of software and
above all this, disappointment among the users of the software.
Figure 1: The Software Crisis dilemma extracted from
medium.com
2 CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOFTWARE CRISIS OF
THE 1960s
2.1 When the Software Crisis began
During the 1960s, a software crisis was experienced by the world
of Computer Science. This was due as a result of engineers not
being able to build the software they were asked to build. There
were limited capabilities of developers and software and there was
a rise in the software demand. Projects were too complicated for
developers to keep up with. In 1968 and 1969 some of the issues
were addressed and a solution was being looked into during a
conference at the NATO Software Engineering Conferences.
2.2 Types of software problems
Some of the software problems that were identified according to
Cohane (2017), included software that was difficult to maintain
and make changes to, not reliable, had a poor quality as well as
software being delivered late, faulty and overly costly. Projects
were also run overtime and the hardware manufacturing speed
was much faster than software development thus leading to the
software crisis.
On example of the software crisis was the Y2 K (“the year 2000”)
disaster which occurred between 1960 through 1980. During this
time, complicated computer programs were written. Engineers
decided to shorten the dates by removing the first two digits
because of data storage being costly and taking up space. This
resulted in damaged and flawed programs of activities that
occurred on a daily or yearly basis as the computer could not
interpret 00 as 2000, but as 1900.
2.3  Reasons for software problems
The reason for these software problems were due to the fact that
there was no change in workforce, methods and tools; it all
remained the same. Therefore, as the increasing demand,
challenges and complexity of the software grew, existing methods
were inadequate.
In addition, there was insufficient planning done thus resulting in
poor software. There was also a lack of control and review- since
reviews help in ensuring quality software and help in finding
errors. Therefore, if no reviews are done, there will be poor
development of software.
3 SOLUTIONS
3.1 Software Engineering’s Response
One of the solutions for software crisis was Software Engineering. of the 22nd international conference on Software
Software engineering is a field of Computer Science that involves engineering (pp. 78-87).
software and applications software creation and construction of
computer systems. Software for applications consists of user-
focused programs that include web browsers, database systems,
[2] Cohane., R (2017) Has the Software Crisis Passed?
etc.
Available from: https://medium.com/@ryancohane/has-
the-software-crisis-passed-d45ce975a1e7 [Accessed 19
3.2 Solutions to prevent future Software Crisis
August 2020]
A few of the solutions would be to minimize the software over-
budget, ensure that there is minimal time needed to complete a
project, improve the quality of the software, use an experienced
[3] Fitzgerald, B., 2012. Software Crisis 2.0. Computer,
person in the team to work on the software project and ensure the
45(4), pp.89-91.
software is delivered on time.

In addition, as stated by UKEssays (2018), one possible solution to

the software crisis is software engineering since it focusses on all
[4] Jensen, R., (2014) Why Do We Still Have Software
aspects of software production.
Development Problems? Available from:
https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=22464
4 WERE THE SOLUTIONS SUCCESSFUL?
03 [Accessed 20 August 2020]
Some of the problems faced during the 1960s still persists today.
The reason for this is due to the fact that in today’s world, we still
see the software crisis taking place because of late deliveries,
over-budgeting in most countries, if not all, products sometimes [5] Thakur, D., Software Crisis in Software Engineering
doesn’t meet the specified user requirements and there are still [online] Available from: ecomputernotes.com/software-
corrupt documentations. Today the software crisis is very can be engineering/software-crisis
seen as a very different aspect because we now have an array of
science programming which helps us to design and document
software easier than before. With this in mind, we can still say [6] UKEssays (2018) Software Crisis [online] Available
that the software crisis continues because we still see the poor from: ukessays.com/essays/computer-science/software-
communication between Computer Scientists and those who crisis.php
wrote software. The work of Cohane (2017) highlights that the
software crisis hasn’t really been fixed. This is evident when
Cohane (2017) states that “I don’t believe that the software crisis
has ever really been resolved.”

5 CONCLUSION
With all things considered, the history of the software crisis has
caused a great inconvenience and huge financial loss to many. It
seems as if software engineering is the best option to overcome
the software crisis since software engineering focusses mainly on
systematic and a discipline approach to software (UKEssays, 2018).

REFERENCES
[1] Bryant, A., 2000, June. It's engineering Jim… but not as
we know it: software engineering—solution to the
software crisis, or part of the problem? In Proceedings
2
Magnetic Normal Modes of Bi-Component Permalloy Structures WOODSTOCK’97, July 2016, El Paso, Texas USA