
Phillip Glen ArmourCorvus International | Editor IEEE Computer
Phillip Glen Armour
BSc Physics & Pure Math, Sheffield U 1972
About
65
Publications
37,978
Reads
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503
Citations
Introduction
Over 43 years in professional software development. Independent consultant since 1989 at Corvus International Inc.--now Director of The Shields Lake Center for Leadership Development. Contributing editor at "Communications of the ACM" writing The Business of Software column from 2000 to 2018--this is where most of the articles come from.
Author of "The Laws of Software Process" (Auerbach 2003). Editor at IEEE Computer since 2021
Additional affiliations
March 1989 - May 2015

Independent Researcher
Position
- VP Systems Development | Principal Consultant | Contributing Editor
October 2004 - June 2006
Number Six Software
Position
- Research Director
Education
June 2010 - June 2010
QSM Inc
Field of study
- Project Estimation
Publications
Publications (65)
What is the optimal amount and level of detail for predefined and documented (and enforced) process for systems development? This question has been debated for decades by software practitioners, computer theorists, and those responsible for resourcing the business.
The article discusses how the speed of modern tools may decelerate development. As well as encouraging unplanned experimenting, faster development tools may paradoxically increase the time to complete programming tasks. They may do this by encouraging a large number of small iterations where the learning increment is minimal, instead of a small num...
Whether forecasting is valuable.
The Communications Web site, http://cacm.acm.org, features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of Communications, we'll publish selected posts or excerpts.twitterFollow us on Twitter ...
Estimation models at the extreme.
Phillip G. Armour states that the software business is affected by the between individual and team skills of programmers. It is observed that the dynamics of an effective team are more complex than they appear and low-performing people can have an effect on a project other than through the products they produce. It has also been found that the soft...
Some examples of the upward or downward spiral of behaviors in the workplace.
A guide to playing the ploys frequently employed by cliché-driven management.
Phillip G. Armour states that the next-generation software engineers will involve designing systems and use software, to develop software, without relying on paper-based formats. He states that the next-generation software developers will avoid using paper-based formats for developing software, as these formats are unable to describe the operation...
CONTENTS: 1) Software Tracking:The Last Defense Against Failure by Capers Jones: This article concentrates on four worst practices and the factors that most often lead to failure and litigation and gives advice on how to avoid them. 2) Does Project Performance Stability Exist? A Re-examination of CPI and Evaluation of SPI(t) Stability by Kym Hender...
Software project estimation is not what we think it is because, to some extent, software is not what we think it is. This article explores an alternative view of both software and project estimation and concludes that the process of estimation could be much more valuable than we usually make it.
Methods, tools, approaches, and formulae to devise the accurate estimate are attained in software project at different times in the project life cycle. A mathematical analogy is used in certain knowledge environment when there is an awareness of the presence of a variable but do not know its value or an unawareness of the presence of a variable. A...
Software development is a knowledge-acquisition activity, and the main factor count is the knowledge we need to make the systems work. There are different tools and repositories that help us in developing a software easily and fastly. Even when we do write code, we are ably supported by robust languages, powerful tools, and comprehensive libraries....
The development of software projects in various companies is committed at uncertain levels of probabilities. The probability of success for the project starts out at a nominal 50%. Each optimistic assumption that is postulated removes resources from the project and hides the risk in the assumption. Starting at 50%, the probability gets whittled dow...
Various techniques and tools are developed that allow to calculate the level of risk on a project. Most organizations develop project estimates based on a planning paradigm. The commitment estimate is created from a detailed task-based work breakdown structure and the summary numbers of schedule, cost, and staff that are used to resource the projec...
The challenges faced by software management companies and their new software development strategies for providing quality data and information to the users are discussed. The development practices include adopting new methodologies, life cycles, technologies, and languages to create a software. The other development process involves utilizing softw...
The article discusses how to improve employee productivity and satisfaction based on the concept of "flow The article discusses how to improve employee productivity and satisfaction based on the concept of "flow." Optimal flow is the state of performing a task within an optimal level of competence and comfort. If a task is too easy, it becomes rout...
This article explains how computer software manufacturers can achieve success with their initiatives for software process change This article explains how computer software manufacturers can achieve success with their initiatives for software process change. The author explained how a comment made by Art Sundry, an executive at Motorola, helped to...
The size of mountains can be measured in two ways, in the first way the mountains are climbed sizing up all the boulders that went into the structure and in the second way the mountains can be triangulate and several global measurements from different places can be taken. The counting boulders approach tends to put the task planning in front of the...
"If we managed finances in companies the way we manage software…somebody would go to prison."
---Introduction to a workshop on configuration management conducted by Corvus International in 1996
Various aspects of risk management in organizational project portfolios are discussed. Every software project always involves some unknown key variables at the time of start, which leads to significant risks. It is found that organizations performs risk collection explicitly, thereby being unable to estimate the level of risks they are undertaking....
Various issues in relation to the art of testing software are presented. It is stated that the most important considerations of any software development practice are issues of economics and human psychology. It is opined that the art of software testing involves establishing a set of tests for a trivial program that accepts input to be used to pred...
The importance of software testing in the software development projects is discussed. A software development project generally encounters problems such as software defects, project overruns and project failure. Testing is a part of software development, which discover the unknown causes of software failure. It involves setting up specifications, co...
Challenges in estimating software scope by effort.
Lines of Code (LOC), a most common software sizing metric for estimating system size in an attempt to measure knowledge content was developed. Another sizing method known as Function Points (FPt) involves counting and weighting input, output and data storage elements with an adjustment thrown in for some aspects of the environment in which the syst...
The development of executive code postscript to learn and provide many functions of a real programming systems is discussed. It is expected to help to construct web pages and write supporting code easily. The basic requirements for the system are to create a web based application that will interactively provide knowledge to executives responsible f...
Attempting to overcome the challenges to effectively conveying knowledge.
Blurring the lines of distinction between team roles is often necessary to adapt to a changing environment.
This article focuses on reorganizations in organizations. A company is restructured to align some internal function with some external constraint or requirement. Software businesses and IT organizations seem more prone to reorganization than most. There are many rapidly changing factors present in the business of software such as changing market ex...
Reconsidering some commonly accepted project management practices.
Software developers would do well to place more emphasis on the social and communication traits of team members.
The human factor in software development is the ingredient that ultimately gives a project team its soul.
In this article, the author discusses laws of software process in the U.S. In some software circles, process is considered to be the issue that needs to be resolved to fix the "software crisis." Improving process has become an article of faith in some corners, while avoiding it has assumed the status of guerrilla warfare in others. Some companies a...
Focuses on the uniqueness of project teams in computer software development. Differences between tactical, problem-solving, creative and learning teams; Requisites to having a well-defined process; Need to free brain cycles from the repetition of predictable and mechanistic activities.
O desenvolvimento de software é uma atividade inteiramente humana e fortemente intelectual. Existem poucos aspectos na criação de sistemas de computador que não tenham sua base em pensamento, raciocínio e lógica. Nós, desenvolvedores, somos excessivamente cerebrais e tendemos a viver conforme padrões racionais. Mas existem outros aspectos na constr...