Software Manufacturer CEO

In automotive and pharmaceutical companies, the CEO can name what a recurring defect costs: recalls, litigation, lost sales, adverse event reports. Regulators require the number, so the business produces it.

Ask a software CEO the same question. The cost is not small. It is spread across engineering time, support load, incident response, and churn, and nothing in the business adds it up.

If nobody can say what your most recurring class of coding error cost last year, that is the finding.

Discussion prompts

• What would it cost to eliminate your most recurring defect class, compared with continuing to ship fixes for instances of it?
• When did your organization last study how your product security program affects your customers' operations?
• Which budget lines is the cost of that defect class hiding in today?