Here's Alan Cooper again, talking about the costs of software development.  I like Alan Cooper, he reminds me of a Michael Moore of Software Development.  He talks loud, is funny and interesting and I belive that he's fighting the good fight.

He invented the visual forms designer for Visual Basic and has written some excellent books on how to design visual interfaces and who should do the designing( the title "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" provides a hint that he doesn't think programmers should be designing).

His latest article isn't as powerful as some of his previous ones (read from one angle it sounds like a sales pitch for companies to spend more on training and consulting from his company), but he does  make the following useful points:

• Companies need to spend more on designing and programming, not less.  Programming and design are long-term fixed costs not variables ones.
• Many management ideas are a carry over from the industrial age, which he believes is innapropriates "No company can treat programmers the same as a factory because programmers demand continuous attention and support"
• I like his definition of Softare architecture: "the human-design part of programming that studies users, defines use scenarios, designs interaction, determines form, and describes behavior".