Tom DeMarco was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1999, recognizing his contributions to software engineering and project management. The IEEE Fellow distinction is one of the highest professional honors in electrical and computer engineering, reserved for individuals with "an extraordinary record of accomplishments."
The election came during the peak of DeMarco's influence — between the second edition of peopleware and the publication of slack — and coincided with his receipt of the Wayne Stevens Award. It marked institutional recognition from the same professional society whose journal (IEEE Software) he would use a decade later to publish his controversial self-critique, software-engineering-an-idea-whose-time-has-come-and-gone.