Primary architect of Feature Driven Development (FDD), De Luca created this lightweight methodology for developing computer software with reduced management overhead, time and money circa 1999. He is a global information technology strategist and author in the field of software development methodology, with over 20 years' experience in Australia and the USA in high level project management, strategy, architecture-design and troubleshooting, with IBM and in his own successful IT company, Nebulon Pty. Ltd.
Although De Luca dropped out of secondary school (high school) and did not begin with a college degree, he went to work for IBM in Melbourne, Australia. He began as the mailroom clerk in 1981 at age 17. Within months, he had streamlined the corporation's mail system so that it took him 50 minutes and not 8 hours to complete his allocated tasks. He liked the computing atmosphere and decided he wanted to become a Systems Engineer. He was told at IBM that he needed a university degree to do this, so he used his personal time to read and teach himself about systems engineering.
Using his spare time at work, De Luca learned "on-the-job" by assisting the IBM programmers and designers there in Melbourne. He was rewarded with a job as a trainee operator dealing with administration and systems hardware. Simultaneously, he also began to modify operating systems and to write small programs, some of which turned out to be solutions to existing problems. His natural flair for innovation was noticed by IBM executives and he was sent to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a six-week residency. This turned into a much longer stay, and he was identified as a systems engineer with significant potential and was promoted 32 levels in one jump to an Associate Systems Engineer.
At the IBM Rochester, Minnesota Programming Laboratory, De Luca developed network software to connect different types of IBM computer systems. He co-invented a programming technique, Optimizing List Display Processing, while his team at IBM's Rochester, Minnesota Programming Laboratory pioneered, designed and developed Object Distribution Facility/36 software that seamlessly connects networks of IBM System/36, System/38 and the new AS/400 systems together. He received one of IBM's highest awards, the Outstanding Innovative Achievement Award, not just once, but twice.
He resigned from IBM in 1993 as a Senior Systems Strategist and returned to Melbourne, Australia, where he formed his own consultancy company, Nebulon Pty. Ltd. De Luca developed extensive, complex software systems using the Java technology (with the programming language), object-modelling in UML, and FDD. In 1999, he co-authored "Java Modeling In Color With UML" (1999, ISBN 0-13-011510-X), with Peter Coad and Eric Lefebvre.
