Value Engineering for Software Construction

Many years ago, I lerarned that the "Design Pattern" concept was borrowed from the building architecture field to the software architecture field. I found that it was interesting to see how the cross field interaction can bring the good idea.

This week, I am in the AACE conference in New Orleans, LA. AACE is an association for cost engineers, many of who come from the construction industry. I learned that in construction, people are very concerned about "getting the great value possible for every dollar spent on captial construction". A set of "Value Engineering" or "Value Analysis" tools and techiques were thus developed to address the needs. Basically it is used to select the best design concept, which can yield least lifecycle costs. The concern is not just to gain the cost saving for the project during the construction phase, but for meeting operatability, maintainability, reliability, durability, and other criteria from the owners.

In software construction, we have the same concern. John Wookey called it "Superior Ownership Experience". Can we borrow the value engineering methodologies to the software application architecture and construction process?