Tom Gilb is a Norwegian software engineering pioneer best known for developing evolutionary delivery (EVO) and for his foundational work on software metrics and requirements engineering. He is the author of "Software Metrics" (1977) and "Principles of Software Engineering Management" (1988), and is widely regarded as a forerunner of agile and iterative development thinking.
Gilb and gerald-weinberg co-authored humanized-input-1977, a collaboration that placed both figures in the tradition of human-centered computing at a time when the field was dominated by machine-centric thinking. Their shared emphasis on human factors, measurement, and the social dimensions of software work made them natural collaborators even as their subsequent careers diverged in emphasis—Gilb toward quantitative metrics and iterative delivery, Weinberg toward organizational psychology and systems thinking.
Both men became independently influential figures in software engineering, and both were skeptical of silver-bullet solutions and large-batch waterfall methods. Gilb's evolutionary delivery parallels Weinberg's incremental, feedback-driven approach to organizational change as described in the quality-software-management-framework. Their 1977 collaboration stands as an early artifact of the humanistic software engineering tradition that each would develop in his own direction over subsequent decades.