The Software Supply Chain and the SDLC

Software development and manufacturing have an unsurprising trend in common. In modern manufacturing, companies rarely make all their parts in-house. The automotive industry, for example, relies on a broad and complex network of vendors. This also means a defective vendor component can disrupt the entire supply chain. Consider how one vendor’s faulty airbag inflators caused the largest recall in American automotive history, impacting over half a dozen automakers who used those parts and tens of millions of vehicles. Modern software development faces similar issues.

In modern software development, too, it is increasingly rare for companies to create everything completely in-house. Like automakers, software companies rely on a range of third-party building blocks. Taking the supply chain management concept from manufacturing, each of these blocks becomes part of their SSC.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

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