Tom Gilb

Tom Gilb has mainly worked within the software engineering community, but since 1983 with Corporate Top Management problems, and since 1988 with large-scale systems engineering (Aircraft, Telecoms and Electronics). He is an independent teacher, consultant and writer. He has published nine books, including the early coining of the term “Software Metrics” (1976). He wrote “Principles of Software Engineering Management” (1988, in 2006 in 20th printing), and “Software Inspection” (1993, about 14th printing).

In 2016 Tom released his new management planning book, ‘Value Planning’, in digital format only. He is recognized as the founder or major driver of several technical disciplines such as ‘software metrics’ and ‘evolutionary project management’. His methods are widely and officially adopted by many organizations such as IBM, Nokia, Ericsson, HP, Intel, Citigroup – and many other large and small organizations.

Abstract

We are all continuously bombarded with old and new methods and processes for planning and doing software projects. Many methods seem to be chosen because they are a current fashion: but these fashions come and go, and none are proven lasting powerful solutions, to the problem of management of software system complexity. Our failure rate of projects is a long lasting embarrassment to the profession. We are in fact, not very professional.
In this talk I will kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I will present a method, my invention, the Planning Language ‘Planguage’, Including the ‘Impact Estimation Table’. It can be used to set multiple quantified value and quality objectives, tailored to your organizational needs for software project development. Then it can systematically estimate the quantified impacts and costs of any interesting set of methods, on your objectives. This will allow you to see more clearly which methods are most appropriate for you.
But the fun is that this Planguage tool can also be used for many software projects, particularly for requirements, architecture, quality assurance, and project management. It enables us to take true engineering approach to software development. It is not for everybody, but it is for the complex projects that require an engineering approach. It has decades of proven application internationally.