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Watts Humphrey

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Watts S. Humphrey (4 July 1927 - 28 October 2010[1]) was an American software engineer, key thinker in the discipline of software engineering, and was often called the father of software quality.[citation needed]

Biography

Watts Humphrey received a Bachelor of Science in Physics at the University of Chicago, a Master of Science in Physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration back in Chicago at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

In the late 1960s, Humphrey headed the IBM software team that introduced the first software license. Humphrey was previously a Vice President at IBM.

Humphrey is a Fellow of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and of the Association for Computing Machinery (2008)[2]. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Software Engineering from the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. In 2003, Watts Humphrey was awarded the National Medal of Technology.[3] The Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute in Chennai, India is named after him.

Work

Software Engineering Institute

In the 1980s at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University Humphrey founded the Software Process Program, and served as director of that program from 1986 until the early 1990s. This program was aimed at understanding and managing the software engineering process because this is where big and small organizations or individuals encounter the most serious difficulties and where, thereafter, lies the best opportunity for significant improvement.

The program resulted in the development of the Capability Maturity Model, published in 1989 in Humphrey's "Managing the Software Process"[4] and inspired the later development of the Personal Software Process (PSP) and the Team Software Process (TSP). His personal goal in these developments remained to "improve quality and productivity in software development and to ease what was called the 'Software Crisis'."[5]

See also

Publications

Humphrey is the author of several books, including

  • 2010. Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 2006. TSP, Coaching Development Teams. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 2006. TSP, Leading a Development Team. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 2005. PSP, A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 2001. Winning with Software: An Executive Strategy. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 1999. Introduction to the Team Software Process. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 1997. Managing Technical People - Innovation, Teamwork and Software Process. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • 1995. A Discipline for Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

References

  1. ^ "National Medal of Technology Winner Watts Humphrey, 1927 - 2010". Software Engineering Institute. Retrieved 28 October 2010.
  2. ^ "ACM Fellows (2008)". ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Retrieved 2009-03-26. Watts S. Humphrey, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University; Citation: For contributions to software engineering process discipline.
  3. ^ National Medal of Technology Press Release 2003
  4. ^ [1].
  5. ^ Staff Page for Watts S. Humphrey at www.sei.cmu.edu.

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