Both Sides Always Lose: The Litigation of Software-Intensive Contracts

Posted March 31, 1998 | Leadership | Leadership | Leadership |

A contract is a kind of specification. Instead of describing a new system, it describes a business agreement. A contract suffers from some of the same difficulties that plague a specification: neither is ever entirely clear, entirely "right," or entirely free from interpretation. None of these problems is fatal when there is good will and a commonality of interests between the parties.

About The Author
Tom DeMarco
Tom DeMarco is a Cutter Consortium Fellow. He served on the Editorial Board of Cutter IT Journal (now Amplify) for more than 2 decades. Tom has been a frequent keynoter and moderator at Cutter Summits. Mr. DeMarco is a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild. He was the winner of the 1986 Warnier Prize for "lifetime contribution to the field of computing" and the 1999 Wayne Stevens Prize for "contribution to software methods." His best-selling… Read More
Tim Lister
 Tim Lister is a Cutter Consortium Fellow and a member of Arthur D. Little's AMP open consulting network. He is also a frequent keynoter and moderator of the ADL Summit, powered by Cutter. Mr. Lister, who has more than 40 years of professional software development experience, consults, trains, and lectures at enterprises worldwide. He assists IT organizations in tailoring methodologies and selecting tools for software development groups to… Read More
Tim Lister
 Tim Lister is a Cutter Consortium Fellow and a member of Arthur D. Little's AMP open consulting network. He is also a frequent keynoter and moderator of the ADL Summit, powered by Cutter. Mr. Lister, who has more than 40 years of professional software development experience, consults, trains, and lectures at enterprises worldwide. He assists IT organizations in tailoring methodologies and selecting tools for software development groups to… Read More
Tim Lister
 Tim Lister is a Cutter Consortium Fellow and a member of Arthur D. Little's AMP open consulting network. He is also a frequent keynoter and moderator of the ADL Summit, powered by Cutter. Mr. Lister, who has more than 40 years of professional software development experience, consults, trains, and lectures at enterprises worldwide. He assists IT organizations in tailoring methodologies and selecting tools for software development groups to… Read More
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