Who Needs Evidence, Anyway?
Forrest J. Shull · IEEE Software · 2007
In daily life, we face any number of problems and what seems like an ever-increasing list of possible solutions. The process of building and acquiring software is equally fraught with momentous decisions. However, the infrastructure to help people make informed decisions isn't as well developed. There's certainly no dearth of advertisements for new and improved ways of doing things, nor do we lack vendors' testimonials that their tool, approach, or methodology will solve the big problems. And a lot of people make decisions by hearing what solutions have worked for other people, whether around the water cooler or on discussion boards. Still, we usually can't easily access a helpful set of evidence from other folks, covering many of the decisions that we'd like to make.