Why Software Projects Fail, How to Diagnose Potential Failure,
and How to Make Your Projects Succeed

Tom Gilb
Result Planning, Ltd.

Description:

It is well known, and well documented, that far too many engineering projects fail totally or partially: both in civil engineering [Morris], and in software engineering [Neill]. I think everybody has some opinions about this. I do too, having worked over several decades as an international consultant on a wide range of projects, and having been involved in saving many ‘almost failed’ projects. I will present some of my conclusions, and hope to lend some originality to the discussion. My basic premises are that
• we fail to accurately specify our requirements in sufficient detail, and
• we do not sufficiently focus our design and project management energies on meeting the requirements.

Biography:

Tom Gilb won the award for Best Tutorial Speaker, of 18 different tutorials, December 2003 Eurostar Conference, Amsterdam. Award was based on participant feedback forms. The subject was Specification Quality Control. (Same as this tutorial)
Tom Gilb is an international consultant, teacher and author. His 9th book is ‘Competitive Engineering’ which is a definition of the planning language ‘Planguage’. He works with major multinationals such as HP, IBM, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, US DOD, UK MOD, Douglas Aircraft, Boeing, British Aerospace, Microsoft and many others. See www.result-planning.com for much more detail and free publications on Inspection and Specification QC.
I have applied this method (Inspection) widely to both aircraft (Airplane Drawings) engineering and software engineering, and published a book on the subject (Software Inspection, 1993). His Inspection method is in use today at Boeing as the PEP – Process Error prevention Method. He introduced it in 1990.