Fast Company:

Hamilton is famous for coining the term “software engineering,” but what often gets obscured in that one-sentence origin story is why she started using that term.

…

By framing software development as requiring the rigor and discipline associated with engineering, Hamilton was doing her best to protect her team’s coding from a “fail fast” approach encouraged by management at NASA. The desire to cut corners in the interest of speed devalued Hamilton’s more time-intensive and safety-minded efforts.