Advertisment

A Rich Source of Ideas and Concepts

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

This book is a valuable contribution to the development of software and

systems engineering methodologies, and is based on the author's long and

distinguished career as a consultant, teacher, writer and most of all, as a

thinker in this area. It is worthwhile recollecting that Gilb coined the term

software metrics in the mid 1970s, and his focus on measurement and

quantification is evident across the entire book. He is the author of 9 books,

including the 1976 Software Metrics, which was the foundation for CMM level 4,

and Principles of Software Engineering Management (cited as seminal for the

Agile methods, such as Extreme Programming). His methods are adopted

corporate-wide by major corporations such as Intel, Nokia, and Citigroup.

Advertisment

The challenges of software engineering are many and significant. It is well

documented that inadequate practices in the areas of specification, design and

project management routinely lead to expensive rework, cost and schedule

overruns, thereby impacting management goals, and indeed, organizational

competitiveness. A gamut of framework, tools and techniques have emerged over

the past 20 years or so, attempting to address these issues of engineering and

management. While they have all achieved limited successes, they have tended to

take fragmented approaches, addressing one or more of project management,

quality management, software productivity, specification management and design.

Gilb has set himself the ambitious task of bringing a holistic approach to

these concerns. At the core of Gilb's methodology is Planguage, a full-fledged

specification language, which also provides a thread of continuity throughout

the book. Indeed, the book begins and ends with Planguage, comprising the

introductory chapter and a comprehensive glossary respectively, accounting for

over 32% of the entire book. To derive the maximum benefit from the book, the

practitioner will need to invest a good amount of effort in mastering Planguage.

Planguage meets the requirements of a specification language very well,

including compactness, completeness, and applicability across domains, precision

and consistency. Since it is a well-defined subset of English, learning it is

relatively easy, and can be done iteratively in a "learn-apply-learn more

cycle". Planguage is extensively used in the other major modules of the

book, such as Specification Quality Control (SQC), Impact Estimation (IE) and

Evo, the evolutionary project management system.

Advertisment

I found the section on SQC most striking, and it is easy to implement with

great effect. In a current customer engagement, I pointed out that the

requirement specifications provided by the customer were inadequate from the

perspective of defining actual projects, and this resulted in a four-week, paid

for assignment to clean up the specs in the first place. I believe this effort

will yield significant benefits all round. There are several eye openers in this

section, and the learning from here should lead to immediate benefits. The

section on Design Engineering provides many practical suggestions and a

framework, generic enough to be used in a variety of situations. Design is

intrinsically a creative activity, with corresponding difficulties in

predictability and manageability.

Evo, or the evolutionary project management approach, deserves a detailed

treatment in itself. The proof of a theoretical framework's effectiveness is

finally in the implementation, and this is what Evo addresses. The core of the

Evo approach is the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, and is well suited to short

delivery cycles, pressures on time to market, and the demands of constantly

changing requirements. I find the approach particularly useful, since my

concerns are mainly related to product development, which appear to be well

suited to the Evo approach.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the book is a rich source of ideas and

concepts, in addition to being a handbook for immediate implementation, and a

language manual. The author's focus on measurements and results are also

valuable lessons to be imbibed. In writing this review, I have often wondered

whether Gilb has attempted too much in a single book. It's not an easy read,

but definitely a worthwhile investment, with immediate and ongoing benefits.

Advertisment

Competitive Engineering

by Tom Gilb



Butterworth-Heinemann


Pages: 480 (Paperback)

NV Krishna, Chief Executive, Microsense Software mail@dqindia.com

Advertisment