| Date: | October 20th, 2004 |
| Time: | 6:00 - 8:30 6:00 - 7:00 Networking w/FREE Pizza & soft drinks 7:00 - 7:15 Welcome, Intros, SPIN Business 7:17 - 8:15 Presentation. 8:15 - 8:25 Job Announcements (Bring job openings) 8:25 - 8:30 Book give away. |
| Location: | Microsoft office at the Concourse http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/atlanta.asp |
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Why can’t engineering great software
be as easy as building a house? Vice President, Georgia Institute of Technology Director, Georgia Tech Research Institute Professor, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
ABSTRACT:It can! Our management, customers, and even our fellow engineers believe that the engineering of software intensive systems is different and hard. I’ve exploited this false perception for years. After 30 plus years of building software and supervising software projects, two things now seem obvious in hind sight. First, designing and building great software is not really that much different than designing and building a good house. Both have architectures, both leverage building codes and standards, both benefit from new approaches such as re-use, and both are fundamentally dependent on the skills of the designers and builders and the disciplined processes upon which they base their work. Second, we live in society that expects good houses, but routinely accepts bad software. In this (hopefully) humorous talk, I hope to enlist you in joining me to convince our stakeholder communities that engineering software is no different than the engineering of other artifacts. And I also hope to enlist your help in convincing the marketplace that they should demand and expect high quality software just like they demand and expect such of other engineered artifacts. |
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BIO:Dr. Stephen E. Cross is a Vice President of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute. He also holds faculty appointments as a Professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering and as a Professor in Computer Science. Before joining Georgia Tech in 2003, he was the Director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute, a DoD-sponsored federally funded research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Cross was a member of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Defense Software in 2000. He currently serves on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Panel for Information Science and Technology. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983, his MSEE from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1977, and his BSEE from the University of Cincinnati in 1974. Dr. Cross is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). A retired Air Force officer, he attended the Air Force Test Pilot School (Flight Test Engineer Course) and served in various R&D assignments as a software engineer (F-16, F-15, and B-1A programs), flight test engineer (Air Launched Cruise Missile program), assistant professor (AFIT), research manager (Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories), and program manager (DARPA). |
photos by Nicole Cappello
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