As a young PwC pup, I knew a crusty manager who loved to say "Rapid Application Development (RAD) is FRAUD without the FU..." and in his colorful way he would spell out in detail what exactly FU meant.
Well, two decades later we call our software methodologies different names that still invoke "rapid" - like ASAP and FastForward. But software development and implementation is often still an art not a science. Sadagopan points to a classic list developed by Steve McConnell of common software project mistakes. He wrote these in 1996. Some would say software development has improved since - just look at the CMM driven metrics a number of the Indian software service vendors can show. But for every one of those you just shake your head at Microsoft's continuing battle to patch, re-patch its software against numerous hacking threats. Or at Oracle 11i issues. Or at SAP project overruns.
The state of software development and implementation probably still gives that old PwC guy a chance to emphasize the FU in Snafu and Fubar.
