Software Development's Classic Mistakes 2008

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. Construx recently updated McConnell's original list of classic mistakes and then conducted a survey to assess the prevalence and impact of these mistakes. This white paper shares survey results--both expected and surprising--and analyzes the survey findings.