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Cost of Poor Software Quality in US Exceeds $2 Trillion

The cost of poor software quality (CPSQ) in the US in 2020 was approximately $2.08 trillion, according to The Cost of Poor Software Quality In the US: A 2020 Report from the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), co-sponsored by Synopsys.

This includes poor software quality resulting from software failures, unsuccessful development projects, legacy system problems, technical debt and cybercrime enabled by exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software.

"As organizations undertake major digital transformations, software-based innovation and development rapidly expands," said report author, Herb Krasner. "The result is a balancing act, trying to deliver value at high speed without sacrificing quality. However, software quality typically lags behind other objectives in most organizations. That lack of primary attention to quality comes at a steep cost."

Key findings from the report include:

Operational software failure

Operational software failure is the leading driver of the total cost of poor software quality (CPSQ), estimated at $1.56 trillion — about 10X costlier than finding and fixing the defects before releasing software into operation.

This figure represents a 22% increase since 2018. That number could be low given the meteoric rise in cybersecurity failures, and also with the understanding that many failures go unreported.

Cybercrimes enabled by exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software are the largest growth area by far in the last 2 years. The underlying cause is primarily unmitigated software flaws.

The report recommends preventing defects from occurring as early as possible when they are relatively cheap to fix. The second recommendation is isolating, mitigating, and correcting those failures as quickly as possible to limit damage.

Unsuccessful development projects

Unsuccessful development projects, the next largest growth area of the CPSQ, is estimated at $260 billion.

This figure has risen by 46% since 2018. There has been a steady project failure rate of ~19% for over a decade.

The underlying causes are varied, but one consistent theme has been the lack of attention to quality.

The report states: "It is amazing how many IT projects just assume that “quality happens.” The best way to focus a project on quality is to properly define what quality means for that specific project and then focus on achieving measurable results against stated quality objectives."

Research suggests that success rates go up dramatically when using Agile and DevOps methodologies, leading to decision latency being minimized.

Legacy software

The operation and maintenance of legacy software contributed $520 billion to the CPSQ.

While this is down from $635 billion in 2018, it still represents nearly a third of the US's total IT expenditure in 2020.

The report explains: "CPSQ in legacy systems is harder to address because such systems automate core business functions and modernization is not always straightforward. After decades of operation, they may have become less efficient, less secure, unstable, incompatible with newer technologies and systems, and more difficult to support due to loss of knowledge and/or increased complexity or loss of vendor support. In many cases, they represent a single point of failure risk to the business."

The report recommends strategies to improve quality are about overcoming the lack of understanding and knowledge of how the system works internally. Any tool that helps identify weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failure symptoms, defects and improvement targets is going to be useful.

Conslusion

"As poor software quality persists on an upward trajectory, the solution remains the same: prevention is still the best medicine. It's important to build secure, high-quality software that addresses weaknesses and vulnerabilities as close to the source as possible," said Joe Jarzombek, Director for Government and Critical Infrastructure Programs at Synopsys. "This limits the potential damage and cost to resolve issues. It reduces the cost of ownership and makes software-controlled capabilities more resilient to attempts of cyber exploitation."

Methodologies such as Agile and DevOps have supported the evolution of software development whereby software developers apply enhancements as small, incremental changes that are tested and committed daily, hourly, or even moment by moment into production. This results in higher velocity and more responsive development cycles, but not necessarily better quality.

As DevSecOps aims to improve the security mechanisms around high-velocity software development, the emergence of DevQualOps encompasses activities that assure an appropriate level of quality across the Agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps lifecycle.

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Cost of Poor Software Quality in US Exceeds $2 Trillion

The cost of poor software quality (CPSQ) in the US in 2020 was approximately $2.08 trillion, according to The Cost of Poor Software Quality In the US: A 2020 Report from the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), co-sponsored by Synopsys.

This includes poor software quality resulting from software failures, unsuccessful development projects, legacy system problems, technical debt and cybercrime enabled by exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software.

"As organizations undertake major digital transformations, software-based innovation and development rapidly expands," said report author, Herb Krasner. "The result is a balancing act, trying to deliver value at high speed without sacrificing quality. However, software quality typically lags behind other objectives in most organizations. That lack of primary attention to quality comes at a steep cost."

Key findings from the report include:

Operational software failure

Operational software failure is the leading driver of the total cost of poor software quality (CPSQ), estimated at $1.56 trillion — about 10X costlier than finding and fixing the defects before releasing software into operation.

This figure represents a 22% increase since 2018. That number could be low given the meteoric rise in cybersecurity failures, and also with the understanding that many failures go unreported.

Cybercrimes enabled by exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software are the largest growth area by far in the last 2 years. The underlying cause is primarily unmitigated software flaws.

The report recommends preventing defects from occurring as early as possible when they are relatively cheap to fix. The second recommendation is isolating, mitigating, and correcting those failures as quickly as possible to limit damage.

Unsuccessful development projects

Unsuccessful development projects, the next largest growth area of the CPSQ, is estimated at $260 billion.

This figure has risen by 46% since 2018. There has been a steady project failure rate of ~19% for over a decade.

The underlying causes are varied, but one consistent theme has been the lack of attention to quality.

The report states: "It is amazing how many IT projects just assume that “quality happens.” The best way to focus a project on quality is to properly define what quality means for that specific project and then focus on achieving measurable results against stated quality objectives."

Research suggests that success rates go up dramatically when using Agile and DevOps methodologies, leading to decision latency being minimized.

Legacy software

The operation and maintenance of legacy software contributed $520 billion to the CPSQ.

While this is down from $635 billion in 2018, it still represents nearly a third of the US's total IT expenditure in 2020.

The report explains: "CPSQ in legacy systems is harder to address because such systems automate core business functions and modernization is not always straightforward. After decades of operation, they may have become less efficient, less secure, unstable, incompatible with newer technologies and systems, and more difficult to support due to loss of knowledge and/or increased complexity or loss of vendor support. In many cases, they represent a single point of failure risk to the business."

The report recommends strategies to improve quality are about overcoming the lack of understanding and knowledge of how the system works internally. Any tool that helps identify weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failure symptoms, defects and improvement targets is going to be useful.

Conslusion

"As poor software quality persists on an upward trajectory, the solution remains the same: prevention is still the best medicine. It's important to build secure, high-quality software that addresses weaknesses and vulnerabilities as close to the source as possible," said Joe Jarzombek, Director for Government and Critical Infrastructure Programs at Synopsys. "This limits the potential damage and cost to resolve issues. It reduces the cost of ownership and makes software-controlled capabilities more resilient to attempts of cyber exploitation."

Methodologies such as Agile and DevOps have supported the evolution of software development whereby software developers apply enhancements as small, incremental changes that are tested and committed daily, hourly, or even moment by moment into production. This results in higher velocity and more responsive development cycles, but not necessarily better quality.

As DevSecOps aims to improve the security mechanisms around high-velocity software development, the emergence of DevQualOps encompasses activities that assure an appropriate level of quality across the Agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps lifecycle.

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The Latest

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Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

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2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...