Software Engineering Budget Plan - FY73-FY75

This document, dated April 4, 1973, outlines a proposed Software Engineering budget plan for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for fiscal years 1973 through 1975.

Key points include:

• Strategic Shift: The report highlights a need to move away from product-specific funding toward a centralized "shared pool" for PDP-11 software development. This change is intended to address problems such as inefficient product proliferation, high support costs, and a lack of uniform corporate strategy.
• Primary Goals: The proposal aims to produce higher-quality, more profitable software, simplify inter-system communication, and facilitate easier customer upgrades. It also emphasizes the need for consistency between hardware and software development plans.
• Budget Proposal: The document proposes a 27% increase in the total Software Engineering budget from FY73 to FY74 (from $5.34 million to $6.77 million).
• Funding Mechanism: The plan calls for creating a formal mechanism to propose, review, and approve projects funded from the shared pool, along with investment in "general support" projects that benefit the corporation as a whole, such as hardware pools, shared software tools, and training programs.
• Financial Details: Extensive tables and charts are included in the appendix, providing breakdowns of maintenance and development costs across various market areas (PDP-11, DECsystem-10, and others) and specific project categories.