How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make intention clear to the dumb engine.

Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.

Process improvement is most valuable in raising the floor of a community's practice.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.