QW2001 QuickStart 3Q

Mr. Tom Gilb
(Result Planning Limited)

Planguage: A Defined Language for Clearer Requirements and Design

Key Points

Presentation Abstract

A formal planning language suitable for all aspects of software engineering planning, requirements, design, project planning, risk analysis, organizational improvement, quality control; has been specified. Planguage is unique. There is no other remotely similar alternative. One distinguishing characteristic is that all qualitative stakeholder values are expressed quantitatively. It is defined in free texts on a website, It has been used in practice for years in many multinational corporations. It resembles a programming language in character, but it is a higher level of specification which is particularly good at specifying the very things which programming languages are poor at specifying: quality, costs, risks, and system level relationships. Planguage is a solid and precise foundation for deriving tests from requirements and design. From this talk you will get an overview and s amples of Planguage, which you can follow up from free website materials.

About the Author

Tom Gilb was born in Pasadena in 1940, emigrated to London 1956, and to Norway 1958, where he joined IBM for 5 years, and where he resides when not travelling.

He has mainly worked within the software engineering community, but since 1983 with Corporate Top Management problems, and 1988 with large scale systems engineering. He is an independent teacher, consultant and writer. He has published eight books, including the early coining of the term "Software Metrics" (1976) which is the basis for SEI CMM Level 4. He wrote "Principles of Software Engineering Management" (1988, now in 13th printing, with 3 chapters on Evolutionary delivery methods), and "Software Inspection" (1993). Both titles are really systems engineering books in software disguise. His pro bono systems engineering activities include several weeks a year for US DoD and Norwegian DoD, and environmental (EPA) and Third-World Aid charities or organizations.

His clients include Hewlett Packard, Boeing, Microsoft, Ericsson, Alcatel, Nortel, Oracle, Sun, British Aerospace, UK Civil Aviation Authority, Litton PRC, Siemens, Medtronic and many others.