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.

“This stuff works. Competitive Engineering contains powerful tools that are both practical and simple - a rare combination. Over the last decade, I have applied Tom Gilb's tools in a variety of settings including product development, service delivery, manufacturing, site construction, IT, eBusiness, quality marketing, and management, on projects of various sizes. Thousands of engineers have been through Competitive Engineering training and Planguage workshops that I have authored. The vast majority of students immediately recognize their value and go on to use them beneficially on projects. Competitive Engineering is based on decades of practical experience, feedback, and improvement, and it shows.
― Erik Simmons, Intel Corporation, Requirements Engineering Practice Lead, Corporate Quality Network
“Fundamentally, the book presents a new take on best practices in systems engineering and management... The book passed my value-added test, when I realized that I was photocopying several pages for future reference, to be part of my “toolkit of helpful tips and techniques. I particularly enjoyed reading the 10 often witty, summary principles in each chapter...Perseverance pays off with Competitive Engineering. The book is not a quick read, which Tom acknowledges. You have to carefully study some of the pages to understand the concepts being presented. The reward occurs when you glean the nuggets of wisdom from the numerous practical examples, case studies, and Planguage examples. Tom’s way of presenting the CE concepts makes the book a useful addition to the systems engineer’s library.
― Jerry Huller, Raytheon

“I found Planguage to be an interesting and noble idea for the enhancement of communication in the product development environment...Systems engineering professionals wanting another perspective on applying SE techniques to real product development and those wanting to add additional techniques/ methods to their toolbox will gain most from this book. Readers should have a fundamental knowledge of systems engineering principles and some practical product development experience to realize the full value of this work. I found the chapters describing "Impact Estimation", "Evolutionary Project Management" and "Specification Quality Control" to be specifically relevant and ripe for application to various product development environments.

Overall, the book passes my acid test as a useful reference for Systems engineering professionals... Tom meets his objectives in providing a current definition of Planguage concepts and providing a handbook of fundamental SE principles ready for application with his practical experience and unique product development perspective.
― Martin Coe President-Closed Loop Engineering, Technical Program Director- INCOSE Colorado

“...for those professionals serious about tackling the requirements specification effort in any real project. I am excited about it. He offers his Planguage for structuring the system engineering process and gets at issues of risk, success and failure criteria and evolutionary project development in a rational way. This book is a must read, re-read and study for students and practitioners working in the murky area of mapping the problem domain to the solution domain...It is, as promised, a Handbook. Buy it, and you will use it. It will not collect dust on your bookshelf. This book is a wonderful contribution to our Software Engineering literature.
― ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, January 2006

“Competitive Engineering is an original, experience-based, stimulating, thought-provoking, entertaining, and well worth reading software engineering book.
― IMPROVE, Software Process Improvement Newsletter

“Tom Gilb, the father of the Evo methodology, shares his practical, real-world experience for enabling effective collaboration between developers, managers and stakeholders.
Although the book describes Planguage (a specification language for systems engineering) in detail, the methodological advice alone is worth the price of the book. Evo is one of the truly underappreciated agile methodologies, and as a result, Gilb's thought-provoking work isn't as well-known as it should be, although I suspect that that will change with this book. The book describes effective practices for requirements and design specification that are highly compatible with the principles and practices of Agile Modeling, yet it goes on to address planning activities, quality and impact estimation. I suspect that this book will prove to be one of the "must read" software development books of 2006.
― SD's Agile Modeling Newsletter, February 2006, By Scott W. Ambler, Ambysoft

“I found the rules, principles, and process descriptions associated with the Planguage method particularly interesting and helpful.
― Jayesh G. Dalal, Software Quality Professional, June-August 2006