As software engineers, the value we bring to society lies in the software systems we construct, maintain, and operate. Ideally, we do this in a cost-effective and predictable manner. In reality, however, software projects have a reputation of being late and overly costly.

In this talk, I will reflect on this drawing from experiences in the financial and public sector. Within the former, I will look at agile software development at scale at ING, a global bank headquartered in The Netherlands. Based on years of historic data of around 300 agile software development teams at ING, I will reflect on effort estimation, on time delivery, delay, and team dynamics, at scale. I will contrast this with the public sector by looking at assessments of over 100 government IT projects, conducted by the Advisory Council on IT Assessment (AcICT) of the Dutch government over the past years. Here I will reflect on the assessment procedure and its outcomes, including the main types of risks identified (which may be technical or organizational) and the nature of the advice given (which can include project termination). Given the insights from the financial and public sector, I will conclude by sketching research directions in the areas of governance, predictable value delivery, and modeling.

Arie van Deursen is a professor in software engineering at Delft University of Technology. His research interests include software testing, software architecture, human aspects of software engineering, foundation models, and software engineering for the financial and public sector. He was program chair for ESEC/FSE 2017, ICSE 2021, and presently serves as chair of the ICSE steering committee.

Arie van Deursen is a member of the Advisory Council of IT Assessment (AcICT) of the Dutch government, member of the advisory council of ING Bank Netherlands, and an elected member of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). Follow him on Mastodon as @avandeursen@mastodon.acm.org.