This article discusses how the relationship among the five principal metrics of the software process can often be expresses through a Rayleigh curve.

This article discusses the effectiveness of metrics as the "little whip" needed to promote productivity.

This article discusses the drop in productivity and decline in reliability and how to fix these issues.

This article discusses the trade-off of a little more development time for a lot less effort, cost and defects in the context of the perceived need for "more software now". 

Precise prediction is very difficult.  Long ago, when FORTRAN and COBOL were still the new kids on the block, Ware wrote a science-fiction short story called “The Last Programmer.” That estimable gentleman had become the “last programmer” at his research institution and was being retired early with a gold watch.  The retirement time was set for 1984, a then-future date popularized by George Orwell’s 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.  The assumption was that by 1984 the scientists and engineers would be working directly with the computers.&