According to the CISQ's 2020 report with the catchy title The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US, 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 US 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 US amounted to approximately $2.08 trillion in 2020, CISQ said. Comparing this to the total US 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".