Watts Humphrey
Watts Humphrey, founder of the Carnegie Mellon® Software Engineering Institute's Software Process Program and winner of the National Medal of Technology—the highest honor awarded by the U.S. president to America's leading innovators—will keynote the SEPG Europe 2008 Conference.
Humphrey, a senior fellow at the SEI and primary author of the SEI's Software Process Maturity Model, said his keynote address will focus on his latest research in knowledge work and its impact on software development.
"In particular, knowledge work explores what it takes to make projects successful for all the stakeholders," explained Humphrey, who joined the SEI in 1986 after a distinguished career at IBM. Knowledge work, added Humphrey, will be a critical component in the advancing software industry. And while countries like India and Mexico are well along in embracing knowledge work, few if any European organizations have even taken the first steps to introduce such methods. The foundation of knowledge work is the recognition that the development teams must be an active part of the management system. This requires a trusting and collaborative management style, 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 exploring complex problems, defining and refining concepts, and working with other creative people. This is challenging work, and it requires a very special kind of management," Humphrey says.
According to Humphrey, the term "knowledge work" originated with Peter Drucker, a native Austrian who earned a doctorate in international law in Germany and who wrote 39 books, many of which deal with the impact of management practices and principles on organizations.
Prior to joining the SEI, Humphrey spent 27 years with IBM where he was Director of Programming Quality and Process, Director of Programming, and Vice President of Technical Development. He also managed all of IBM's commercial software development, including the first 19 releases of OS/360.
At the SEI, he introduced the concepts of Software Process Assessment and Software Capability Evaluation and led development of the Personal Software Process (PSP) and the Team Software Process (TSP).
Humphrey holds graduate degrees in physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and in business administration from the University of Chicago. He is an SEI Fellow, a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (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 11 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 U.S. 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, President George W. Bush awarded Humphrey the National Medal of Technology.
