Software quality was identified as one of the greatest challenges facing the software development community in a recent industrywide survey. Seventy-four percent of respondents reported that software quality is their biggest problem. Distributed development and customization were also cited as top concerns for software developers. While tremendous advances in software development tools have accelerated development projects, stiff competition and other market conditions have pressured developers to further improve productivity. The increased use of software configuration management tools (SCM) would improve the process, respondents indicated.

Conducted by AccuRev, the survey polled more than 200 vice presidents of engineering, development directors, senior engineers, developers and programmers. Sixty-five percent of respondents have developers working in remote locations, both domestic and international, and 75 percent reported having parallel development environments with multiple concurrent releases underway.

 …