The world's software is eroding
It’s not just you. The world’s software is feeling a little unstable lately. If it wasn’t the Crowdstrike outage that tipped you off, it was probably the many other outages this year, stopping burgers from being served, stranding passengers at Heathrow Airport, and delaying fresh food at the UK borders.
Did all those outages happen for the exact same reason? No, that wouldn’t be a fair assessment, but if there’s anything these outages tell us, it’s that something’s amiss in how our industry maintains software. You’d be forgiven if the headlines have you believing not enough maintenance goes into software. It’s actually the opposite. In an average developer work week of 41.1 hours, 42 percent of that time is dumped on maintenance, and over a third goes to dealing with technical debt.