Systems Engineering Courses by Tom Gilb - London, September 2003

This page provides details on the free Tom Gilb courses in September.

For the latest information and booking please see:  www.etudeconsulting.com/tom_gilb_seminars.htm .

INCOSE Members from the UK and elsewhere are particularly welcome. Tom had five papers published at the INCOSE 2003 International Symposium.

Evidence of interesting content will be found at www.gilb.com . Tom's new book manuscripts  “Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems and Software Engineering management using Planguage” and “EVO (Evolutionary Project Management)” are available from his web site as free downloads.

O verview of the Free Gilb Courses in London.

Full Day courses. 9-5:30 PM, September 2003, Covent Garden, London (except for Wed 17th September)

Details of the Free Gilb Courses in London.

Monday 15th September, 2003: Competitive Engineering for System and Software Engineers.

• This will be an overview of the strong new system and software engineering methods described in detail in Gilb’s forthcoming book ‘Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems and Software Engineering Management using Planguage.”

• The subject matter covers requirements, design, specification quality control and evolutionary project management.

• A copy of the book manuscript is available free for download at www.gilb.com

• These methods are arguably the most powerful and advanced systems development methods available.

• The key unifying and distinguishing feature is the ability to quantify all quality and cost aspects simultaneously.

• This is an excellent overview for people planning to attend any of the other courses, or who plan to send their colleagues to the other courses.

Tuesday 16th September:   Evolutionary Project Management (‘Evo’) .

• Evo is arguably the most successful project management method for complex and large projects (see Larman & Basili in IEEE Computer, June 2003 for history.)

• Evo has long been practiced by leading edge software and systems developers, but most people have not had training, experience and practical correct understanding of the method.

• Evo can be practiced in an ‘Agile’ simplified version, or in a full scale and large scale development mode.

• Evo is based on delivering real results to real stakeholders, early and frequently.

• Evo is based on learning quickly what works and what doesn’t – what things cost and what people really want – learning by practical feedback.

• Evo is based on and integrated with the Planning language (Planguage) – refer to the other courses.

 Wednesday 17th Sept,  2 - 5 PM, Imperial College, London, Room 418 Huxley building : 'Planguage': a planning language for requirements and more

Sponsored by BCS RESG. http://www.resg.org.uk . Contact: Sebastian Uchitel .

Thursday-Friday.  Sept 18-19 ^th 2003: Advanced Requirements Engineering: Based on Planguage.

• This is the most advanced and comprehensive course on requirements specification.

• This requirements method is distinguished from others by its ability to integrate multiple quantified quality and cost requirements with functions and constraints.

• This method permits and encourages detailed specification of requirements so that requirements can better assist us with risk management, prioritization, estimation, design, quality control, and project management

• This course is based on the well defined methods in ‘Competitive Engineering’.

• These methods are spreading quickly, as the standard, in leading corporations such as Intel and Citigroup today.

Monday 22nd September: "Priority Management for Strategic and Organizational Planners".  

(Based on the book manuscript ‘Priority Management’  at www.gilb.com ).

• Setting quantified organizational objectives – how to quantify organizational values.

• Evaluating strategies on multiple quantified objectives and cost-constraints – the impact estimation method.

• Quality Control – numeric review – of management planning.

• Th e Evolutionary method for getting results. Evolving quickly towards numeric objectives.

• This method is suitable for anybody who plans organizational improvements.

• This method is compatible with the ‘Compeititive Engineering’ methods in the other courses. It is an ‘engineering’ method applied to Organisational Planning.

 Tuesday  23 ^rd September: Specification Quality Control: SCQ The New Agile Inspection and Review Process.

• this course is based on the methods described in ‘Software Inspection’ (Gilb and Graham 1993).

• The focus however is on a subset which is 100 times less expensive and arguably as powerful as the traditional inspection methods.

• The main concept is that we will quality control a sample of any type of specification (requirements, source code, test plans, contracts, designs)

• we will check this sample against a defined official set of best practice rules

• we will estimate the major defect density of the specification

• we will decide to ‘Exit’ (release) the specification if the density is low enough.

• we will strongly motivate system developers to reduce their defect insertions (bad practices, unintelligible specs) by 50-200 times current levels within a year.

• this new method has recently, in London, reduced average defects by at least 10X in the very short term (weeks).

  Motivation:

These courses are samples and demonstrations. These courses are intended for individuals in organisations, including managers, consultants, methods developers, writers and trainers, that are looking for better methods and will recognize better methods when presented. We assume that if satisfied, participants will encourage their own organisation, or friendly organisations, to use the methods. We also hope that they might like to get our help  - and the help of our partners - in training and consulting; to help make the use of these methods successful; more certainly and more quickly.

 Selection Criteria:

Priority will be given for one representative from each geographic or divisional company/academic site. Other company people can be submitted for a waiting list, to attend if capacity finally permits. This will be decided September 10 ^th or later, but at lest 24 hours before the course begins. Priority will also be given to current and past clients of Gilb and Etude Consulting. This set of courses is primarily intended for UK organisations but overseas people are in principle welcome.

 Hours:

The courses will start at 09:00 and end at 5:30 PM.

There will be coffee breaks at 11 to 11:30 am and 3 to 3:30 PM

Lunch will be taken 12:30 to 2 PM.

All break refreshments and food are outside the locale, at participant expense.

 Practical:

P articipants are encouraged to bring laptops with CD readers and USB ports for documentation. This is optional but useful. Written documentation will not be provided on site, but can be downloaded in advance by each participant.

Last Updated: 01 September, 2003