SFC Software Forensics Centre

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Welcome to SFC

The Software Forensics Centre is based at the School of Engineering & Information Sciences at Middlesex University. SFC is primarily concerned with:

• symptoms of failure in software projects
• patterns of failure
• learning from failure in software projects
• using methods for analysing complex systems to predict failure in software projects
• recording of assumptions during projects
• feedback, improvement and evolution
• designing fault-tolerant software projects
• incremental development and achieving retained value after failure of software project
• developing narrative methods for analysing failures
• improving the practice of managing complex projects.
  

The general aim of our work is to improve software development and management practice through empirical work. As far as the "failure" aspect is concerned, we are interested in failures that occur during the life of the project itself (i.e. pre-delivery) and also in failures that are subsequently manifested during the operational life of the product/system. Despite the apparent prevalent emphasis on failure, we are also interested in success and its causes, and the extent to which standards and models increase the probabilities of success

The Centre holds information and cases pertaining to a large volume of international failures. The repository of failures is the largest of its kind in the world and has specific details of well over 300 projects (with links to another 2,000 cases). The forensic repository is unique in two respects. Firstly, it focuses on development failures rather than on operational failures and is therefore the only dedicated resource of its kind. Secondly, it contains detailed analysis of cases rather than just short journalistic articles.

Your Contribution

We welcome your contributions and suggestions. It is particularly valuable if you know of a software failure case that you would like to share information about. You can do this privately by contacting us by e-mail. You can also share your information publicly by allowing us to place the information on the web via our Failure Cases link. Our intention is to make a large proportion of the cases available in electronic format.