BONUS Tom Gilb: Building True Engineering Culture and Delivering Value Through Evolutionary Methods

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

BONUS: Tom Gilb on Building True Engineering Culture and Delivering Value Through Evolutionary Methods

In this BONUS episode, we dive deep into the world of true engineering discipline with Tom Gilb, a pioneer who was writing about Agile principles before Agile was even named. We explore his latest book "Success - Super Secrets & Strategies for Efficient Value Delivery in Projects and Programs, and Plans" and uncover the fundamental flaws in how organizations approach project delivery and stakeholder management.

The Genesis of Success-Focused Engineering

"People were failing at project deliveries - even when using Agile. I saw there was very little about setting clear goals and reaching them, it had nothing to do with being successful."

Tom's motivation for writing his latest book stems from a critical observation: despite the widespread adoption of Agile methodologies, project failure rates remain unacceptably high. The core issue isn't methodology but rather the fundamental lack of clarity around what success actually means. Tom emphasizes that true success is about achieving the improvements you want at a price you can afford, yet most organizations fail to define this clearly from the outset.

In this segment, we refer to the book How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg who published statistics on the poor performance of projects in general.

Beyond OKRs: The Power of Quantified Multi-Dimensional Objectives

"First you need to have a definition of what it means to succeed. And that needs to be multi-dimensional. And you need to clarify what they are."

While many organizations believe they're already quantifying objectives through frameworks like OKRs, Tom reveals significant weaknesses in these approaches. True value isn't just profit—it encompasses multiple dimensions including security, usability, and other stakeholder-specific benefits. The key insight is learning to quantify what needs to be achieved across all critical dimensions, as you simply cannot design for high-quality attributes like security without first quantifying and designing for them explicitly.

In this segment, we talk about Tom’s paper on OKR’s titled "OKR Objectives and Key Results: what's wrong and how to fix it".

The Missing Engineering Discipline

"Why is the failure rate of our projects so high?"

Tom identifies a paradoxical problem: engineering organizations often lack true engineering discipline. This fundamental gap explains why project success rates remain low despite technological advances. Real engineering requires systematic approaches to design, stakeholder analysis, and incremental value delivery—disciplines that are often overlooked in favor of rushed implementations.

Stakeholder Analysis: Beyond User Stories

"Stakeholders have a requirement - even if we don't know it. They might be people, but also law, contract, policies, etc. They all have requirements for us."

Traditional user-centered methods like user stories can lead to failure when critical stakeholders are overlooked. Tom advocates for comprehensive stakeholder analysis as the foundation of engineering discipline. Stakeholders aren't just people—they include laws, contracts, policies, and other constraints that have requirements for your system. The practical tip here is to use AI tools to help identify and list these stakeholders, then quantify their specific requirements using structured approaches like Planguage.

The Gilb Cycle: True Incremental Value Delivery

"Get things done every week, next week, until it's all done. We need to decompose any possible design into enough increments so that each increment delivers some value."

What distinguishes Tom's evolutionary approach from popular Agile frameworks is the focus on choosing the most efficient design and then systematically improving existing systems through measured increments. Each increment must deliver tangible value, and the decomposition process should be aided by AI tools to ensure optimal value delivery. This isn't just about iteration—it's about strategic improvement with measurable outcomes.

Building Engineering Culture: A Two-Leader Approach

"There are two leaders: the tech leaders and the management leaders. For management leaders: demand a value stream of results starting next week. To the tech leaders: learn the engineering process."

Creating a true engineering culture requires coordinated effort from both management and technical leadership. Management leaders should demand immediate value streams with weekly results, while technical leaders must master fundamental engineering processes including stakeholder analysis and requirement quantification. This dual approach ensures both accountability and capability development within the organization.

Further Resources

During this episode we refer to several of Tom’s books and papers. You can see this list below

• Software Metrics by Tom Gilb

• Principles of software engineering management - Also available in PDF

• Evo book

About Tom Gilb

Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile, before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name that Tom used to describe his approach.

You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn.