ITinfo: One Percent of Software Bugs Cause Half of All Errors

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Software Bugs: Tiny & Powerful

You don't have to find many, just the important few

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One Percent of Software Bugs Cause Half of All Errors

by Dave Murphy
ISSN 1535-3613

One percent of the bugs in Microsoft Corp.'s software cause half of all reported errors, with 20 percent of bugs responsible for 80 percent of the mistakes, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Wednesday.

Microsoft Corporation chief executive Steve Ballmer reported yesterday that 20 percent of all software bugs cause 80 percent of all errors and a stunning one percent of the bugs cause half of the errors.

Ballmer stated in a memo, "Let's acknowledge a sad truth about software: any code of significant scope and power will have bugs in it," a comment much like the one that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made earlier this year. "We've been amazed by the patterns revealed in the error reports that customers are sending us," Ballmer wrote.

Dave's Opinion

I'm not surprised at the numbers in Ballmer's statement, although I'm surprised that he made it. I've never taken Ballmer for one to willingly admit to a Microsoft failing, he seems to me to be the consummate Microsoft advocate.

The numbers seem to play out, in 1906 Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, wrote that 20 percent of Italian people owned 80 percent of their country's accumulated wealth. Over time, the 80/20 rule, sometimes known as the Pareto's Principle or the Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule, has come to be applied to many relationships. Pareto's rule essentially states that a minor number of catalysts are responsible for a major number of effects, keeping a standard ratio of 20:80. While the 80/20 rule is expected by many people, I'll bet only software engineers recognize that most of the recognized problems in code are caused by must a handful of errors, the major errors.

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http://itrain.org/itinfo/2002/it021003.html
updated October 3, 2002