The Rhetoric of “Software Complexity” - Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors

Several keynote speakers at Convergence 2004, Vehicle Electronics to Digital Mobility: The Next Generation of Convergence identified “software complexity” as a major challenge facing the automotive industry. This concern was echoed in numerous papers throughout the conference. The open question was: “How do we manage software complexity?”

If we are to manage software complexity - or any problem - effectively and efficiently, we must address the root causes, not the symptoms. We must resist the urge to jump at seemingly obvious solutions, or more importantly, creating problem statements with hidden assumptions. We must approach the problem without preconceptions or artificial boundaries.