On January 1, 2020, Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ) released a 2020 report entitled The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US, in which they estimated the total cost of poor software quality (CPSQ) in the U.S. in 2020 was $2.08 trillion.
Researchers found that the largest contributor to CPSQ was “operational software failure,” which includes data privacy and security failures, and cost approximately $1.56 trillion in 2020. Legacy system failures cost U.S. companies an estimated $520 billion, while development project failures specifically due to software quality shortcomings cost approximately $260 billion. In addition to including a detailed analysis of the findings, the report contains recommendations for steps companies can take to lower the cost of poor software quality.
