Epideviology: the study of the causes of successful software development efforts, and the application of this study to increase success rates

Welcome to Epideviology!

We define epideviology as:

"the study of the causes of successful software development efforts, and the application of this study to increase success rates."

Epideviology is a play on the word epidemiology, the basic science of public health. The science of epidemiology, as defined by the CDC, is:

"the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states in specified populations, and the application of this study to control health problems." 

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/excite/classroom/intro_epi.htm

Vision

While epidemiology deals with populations of biological objects, software systems consist of a large population of technological objects. These objects are designed and created by humans for human purposes. Thus, epideviology is concerned with how those populations of objects depend upon each other, interact with each other, and otherwise co-exist.

We believe that many of the lessons learned by public health scientists and epidemiologists can be applied to the process of developing software systems to keep those systems free of the "software diseases" like a high prevalence of defects or an inability to modify the program.

Please stay tuned as we develop these ideas through future blog posts, lessons learned, and code samples.