This was actually an answer that I wrote in my Software Engineering Final. The question had asked us to describe the state of the software engineering practice today (with respect to the time period of the post’s date).

Software Practices are highly fragmented in their standards owning to the diversity of software solutions which meet a very large set of user requirements. For instance one can observe the fragmentation in the standards in the SDLC models being adopted, which basically involves a mix and match of the standard models (waterfall…Agile). The same can be observed in the diversity of the implementation frameworks: .NET, Java, Rails. Such a fragmentation is never conducive for collaborations between various developing organizations. This leads to the creation of middle-ware overheads which connects collaborating entities coming from varying developer cultures. Overall this leads towards inefficient software practices which result in substandard software solutions.