For it is his invaluable experience and knowledge of how software and people work, combined with his intellectual curiosity, that today characterises and distinguishes Tom's contributions to software engineering. For that distant decision not to pursue a PhD a long time ago we should all be very grateful!

Tom began his career at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he served as part of the now-legendary ESS-1 project. The project, in its work to develop new electronic switching systems, increased the productivity of its programmers by a factor of three by switching from paper and pencil programming to interactive programming using a new IBM computer. This was no mean feat, and a degree of success unlikely to be repeated in today's software industry.

In the 1970s Tom worked increasingly with some of the key systems thinkers who were around at that time. In 1979 he wrote a book entitled Structured Analysis and System Specification. The term "ground-breaking" is often over-used in the software industry. But not in this case. The result of Tom's book was nothing less than the definition of a new discipline - structured analysis - a discipline that for over 20 years now has underpinned research into how we engineer complex computerised systems. Tom's book also gave us one of the most useful tools that a systems analyst can have - the data flow diagram.

We will have taught most of you who are graduating here today how to use data flow diagrams over the last year or two. Likewise, our world-leading research at City University in requirements engineering and the design of complex socio-technical systems still uses concepts and techniques that were first presented in that book. It is no under-statement to say that Tom's work during this period has paved the way for us ever since.

Over the next 20 years Tom wrote four more ground-breaking books on managing software projects. His most recent is called Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency. It addresses the question - why we are all so damned busy - and offers some unsettling answers. It challenges the recent management craze of down-sizing, restructuring, and cost-cutting in the name of efficiency and global competition. Tom shows us that the resulting costs in human capital - stress, pressure, and over-commitment - may ultimately deprive an organisation of the very success it seeks. Instead, as the book's title suggests, what we need is slack. Slack that provides us with the quality time to solve the right problems in the most effective way. Perhaps being labelled a "slacker" is something that we should all be more proud of.

In 1983 Tom and some colleagues set up the Atlantic Systems Guild. The Guild is one of the world's leading consulting organizations, specializing in the complex processes of systems development, with particular emphasis on the human dimension. Tom's work is characteristic of that of the Guild. It brings together the academic and the practical Ð the theoretical and the pragmatic. He provides us with inspirational insights, and makes critical associations that help us look at how we design systems in new ways. To quote one recent reviewer - "Tom DeMarco's insights are shockingly pragmatic. Where other writers aspire to be Machiavellis of management, he is a Montaigne:... sharp, intimate and wise."

I cannot pretend to top that compliment.

In our current, slack-free world, most software developers never have time to reflect on how they develop software systems - what they did well, and what they could do better next time. Academics, on the other hand, often lack the up-to-date experience on which to reflect usefully. What Tom does so well is to mix action and reflection in research, then report his reflections to the world's software engineering community so that everyone - academics and practitioners alike - can benefit. Such an approach has been an inspiration to our action research in software engineering at City University.

At the beginning I said that we are fortunate that Tom made the decision not to pursue a PhD and more academic career. I think that you can all agree that this decision has provided the basis for a most successful and influential career.

We at City University are not alone in recognising Tom's unique contribution to software engineering. He is a past winner of the Jean-Dominic Warnier Prize for a lifetime contribution to the information sciences. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE - the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is the winner of the 1999 Stevens Award for his contribution to software engineering methods. And in 2001, at the Software Pioneers Conference in Germany, which brought together many of the great and the good in this field, Tom was selected to represent the discipline of systems analysis.

It is for this major and evolving contribution to the discipline of software engineering that I have the honour, Vice Chancellor, to present for the award of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Mr Tom DeMarco.