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Competitive Engineering: A Handbook For Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage
Competitive Engineering documents Tom Gilb's unique, ground-breaking approach to communicating management objectives and systems engineering requirements, clearly and unambiguously.
Competitive Engineering is a revelation for anyone involved in management and risk control. Already used by thousands of project managers and systems engineers around the world, this is a handbook for initiating, controlling and delivering complex projects on time and within budget. The Competitive Engineering methodology provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization - in engineering, industry, systems engineering, software, IT, the service sector and beyond.
Elegant, comprehensive and accessible, the Competitive Engineering methodology provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization - in engineering, industry, systems engineering, software, IT, the service sector and beyond.
Competitive Engineering is a revelation for anyone involved in management and risk control. Already used by thousands of project managers and systems engineers around the world, this is a handbook for initiating, controlling and delivering complex projects on time and within budget. The Competitive Engineering methodology provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization - in engineering, industry, systems engineering, software, IT, the service sector and beyond.
Elegant, comprehensive and accessible, the Competitive Engineering methodology provides a practical set of tools and techniques that enable readers to effectively design, manage and deliver results in any complex organization - in engineering, industry, systems engineering, software, IT, the service sector and beyond.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 30, 2018
There is a really useful concept of Impact Estimation that can bring enormous value to business and governments worldwide. The idea goes like this:
Use a table to put the following parameters into a single pager comparable system:
- Some attribute(s) improvement goals(quantified)
- Several different designs/solutions
- Expected improvement level (%) for each of the solution,
- Estimated costs for each solution
- Confidence level for the estimates (depending if based on some facts/experience or just guesswork)
- It all boils down to Value vs Cost ratio adjusted by credibility.
Another strong approach - use increments that are no more than 2% of the whole project time/money resources.
However the principles that are presented in the book, are not applied to the way book is written - It's overly dry, trying to achieve 100% exhaustion and coverage for "full systematic portrayal". It makes it difficult and not too enjoyable to read. The planguage concept could be potentially made more appealing.
Use a table to put the following parameters into a single pager comparable system:
- Some attribute(s) improvement goals(quantified)
- Several different designs/solutions
- Expected improvement level (%) for each of the solution,
- Estimated costs for each solution
- Confidence level for the estimates (depending if based on some facts/experience or just guesswork)
- It all boils down to Value vs Cost ratio adjusted by credibility.
Another strong approach - use increments that are no more than 2% of the whole project time/money resources.
However the principles that are presented in the book, are not applied to the way book is written - It's overly dry, trying to achieve 100% exhaustion and coverage for "full systematic portrayal". It makes it difficult and not too enjoyable to read. The planguage concept could be potentially made more appealing.
August 26, 2020
For the purpose an excellent book, not an easy or light ready by any means. If systems engineering is of interest, then one of the books to read for sure.
May 20, 2024
This is a great book which biggest value is its emphasis on a quantitative approach for engineering endeavors in term of requirements gathering, design specification and evaluation, quality control of specifications and project delivery. This is an area where I feel commercial software development is really lacking. Gilb brings a lot of rigor with his detailed approach.
An aspect that I think it's worth highlighting here is his Evo method for project execution, which is essentially what others have copied (read Scrum), and which advocates for an iterative approach focused on early delivery of value as a risk mitigation strategy.
Perhaps the biggest downside for me was that everything is explained in the so called "Planguage" format. This is a sort of coded language invented by Gilb himself in order to capture the information related to each step of his approach. I actually found "Planguage" full of nuances, not really practical and tricky to remember. In essence, you can still borrow the most useful concepts of this book and incorporate to your existing processes without learning "Planguage", which is surely better than whatever finger in the air metrics your current process mandates.
An aspect that I think it's worth highlighting here is his Evo method for project execution, which is essentially what others have copied (read Scrum), and which advocates for an iterative approach focused on early delivery of value as a risk mitigation strategy.
Perhaps the biggest downside for me was that everything is explained in the so called "Planguage" format. This is a sort of coded language invented by Gilb himself in order to capture the information related to each step of his approach. I actually found "Planguage" full of nuances, not really practical and tricky to remember. In essence, you can still borrow the most useful concepts of this book and incorporate to your existing processes without learning "Planguage", which is surely better than whatever finger in the air metrics your current process mandates.
April 20, 2015
Terrible, terrible book. The preface warns you that the book is hard to read due to the density of new ideas. No! The book is hard to read because it is badly written. Worse than this, the book presents advice about how to run software projects without any evidence that the advice works.
It's all just the opinions of one guy. If you have a compelling reason to believe that Tom Gilb is the software development messiah then read this book. Otherwise start your reading list with people who actually build stuff (Kent Beck, Uncle Bob, Steve McConnell, Joel Spolsky, Scott Berkun etc etc etc).
It's all just the opinions of one guy. If you have a compelling reason to believe that Tom Gilb is the software development messiah then read this book. Otherwise start your reading list with people who actually build stuff (Kent Beck, Uncle Bob, Steve McConnell, Joel Spolsky, Scott Berkun etc etc etc).
October 19, 2009
This is toughest book I've ever read! It even sais it itself on the preface. "It's not about pages turned per minute, but ideas per minute". And ideas you really will get. Unless you lose your mind...
I don't mind about the markup language (PLAnguage) that much, but otherwise the book gives a lot of ideas on how to improve processes on software development.
I don't mind about the markup language (PLAnguage) that much, but otherwise the book gives a lot of ideas on how to improve processes on software development.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews