Watts Humphrey, National Medal of Technology Winner and founder of the Software Process Program of the Carnegie Mellon^® Software Engineering Institute (SEI), will serve on the keynote panel at the SEPG North America 2008 Conference.

Humphrey, a senior fellow at the SEI, said his latest research has been in the area of knowledge work and its impact on software development.

"In particular, knowledge work explores what it takes to make projects successful in terms of all the stakeholders," explained Humphrey, who joined the SEI in 1986 after a distinguished career at IBM where he held various technical and executive positions including management of all IBM commercial software development.

Knowledge work, added Humphrey, will be a critical component in the advancing software industry. And while countries like India and Mexico embrace knowledge work, it is still in its infancy in many European organizations.

The foundation of knowledge work is rooted in a different management style that is based on a much more trusting, collaborative approach, Humphrey said.

"While your hands may be involved, the true product of knowledge work is concepts, ideas, and designs and not the devices, machines, or things that may ultimately be produced from these knowledge products. The knowledge worker is most productive when he or she is creating, refining, recording, or elaborating ideas, concepts, and representations. This is creative work, and it requires a very special kind of management," Humphrey recently wrote.

According to Humphrey, the term "knowledge work" originated with Peter Drucker, a native Austrian who earned a doctorate in international law in Germany, and authored 39 books, many of which dealt with the impact of management practices and principles on organizations.

Prior to joining the SEI, Humphrey spent 27 years with IBM including management of the first 19 releases of OS/36, and as Director of Programming Quality and Process.

While at the SEI, he established the Software Process Program, led the initial development of the Software Capability Maturity Model, and introduced the concepts of Software Process Assessment and Software Capability Evaluation.

Mr. Humphrey holds graduate degrees in Physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Business Administration from the University of Chicago. He is an SEI Fellow, a member of the ACM, an IEEE Fellow, and a past member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners. His publications include many technical papers and eleven books. Some of his recent books are Managing Technical People (1996), Winning With Software: An Executive Strategy (2001), PSP: A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers (2005), TSP: Leading a Development Team (2006), and TSP, Coaching Development Teams (2006). He holds five US. patents.

He was awarded the 1993 Aerospace Software Engineering Award presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and an honorary Ph.D. in Software Engineering by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1998. In 2000, the Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute in Chennai, India was named in his honor and the Boeing Corporation presented him with an award for innovation and leadership in software process improvement. In 2005, at the White House, the President of the United States awarded Mr. Humphrey the National Medal of Technology.