Estimated Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S. in 2020: $2.1 Trillion

TechRepublic shares a remarkable calculation by the not-for-profit IT leadership group the Consortium for Information and Software Security:

CISQ’s 2020 report, The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S., looked at the financial impact of software projects that went awry or otherwise ended up leaving companies with a larger bill by creating additional headaches for them. According to the consortium, unsuccessful IT projects alone cost U.S. companies $260 billion in 2020, while software problems in legacy systems cost businesses $520 billion and software failures in operational systems left a dent of $1.56 trillion in corporate coffers.

As a result, the total cost of poor software quality in the U.S. amounted to approximately $2.08 trillion in 2020, CISQ said. Comparing this to the total U.S. IT and software wage base of $1.4 trillion, the company said the figures “underscored the magnitude of the negative economic impact of poor software quality.”