Ariane 5: Who Dunnit?

At a 1993 software symposium in inland China, a keynote speaker from the US joked that he had arrived safely because the transportation systems in China “were not yet heavily controlled by software.” When disastrous accidents occur, computers are often singled out for blame— sometimes, rightly so. What have we learned from our many expensive lessons? Not much. One lesson is the need for risk management, but as Nuseibeh points out, it is not practiced even in mission critical projects like Ariane 5. —Tomoo Matsubara