Commercial pressures of today's economy result in imposed deadlines being the norm for technology projects. Yet the nature of software projects demands that teams deal with the constant dynamics of change. This creates extreme degrees of project risk and perpetuates the so-called "software crisis," whereby a large percentage of projects are canceled, delivered late, over budget, and/or poor quality. However, knowing the nature of these dynamics empowers managers to make decisions on promised functionality, thereby controlling the very factors that degrade software quality and reliability.
