Staff Page for Patricia Oberndorf

Director, Dynamic Systems Program

Administrative home

Dynamic Systems

Key responsibilities

Tricia Oberndorf is responsible for management and direction of the Dynamic Systems Program, and technical oversight of the Performance Critical Sustems (PCS) and Integration of Software-Intensive Systems (ISIS) initiatives.

Professional Background

Tricia Oberndorf has almost 30 years of experience in the field of software engineering. She is currently director of the Dynamic Systems Program at the SEI. The Dynamic Systems Program works in the areas of system integration, systems-of-systems interoperability, COTS-based systems, and performance critical system aspects such as reliability, dependability, and real-time behavior. She is co-author of the book, Managing Software Acquisition: Open Systems and COTS Products.

Most of Oberndorf's career has focused on issues of integration and interoperability in various contexts. Since coming to the SEI she has been a principal in work on open systems, the construction of systems from COTS products, and development of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) environments. She has worked as a principal investigator, consultant, and instructor. She has led and participated in the development of several courses and tutorials on these subjects, targeted to both managers and practitioners. She has published a wide range of technical reports. Her work has involved her in many different project circumstances, both national and international.

Prior to working at the SEI, Oberndorf spent almost 20 years with the United States Navy, where she worked with software engineering environments and interfaces and served as co-chair of two working groups of the Navy's Next Generation Computer Resources (NGCR) Program: the Operating Systems Standards Working Group (OSSWG) and the Project Support Enviornment Standards Working Group (PSESWG).

Prior to the NGCR work, she co-chaired a working group that developed a standard interface for Ada Programming Support Environments (APSEs), called the Common APSE Interface Set (CAIS) and the application of various methodologies and tools to the design of software. This led to her original involvement in research on software engineering environments (SEEs) in 1976, participating in the production of several analyses, designs, and demonstrations and in the development of generic SEE requirements.

Publications (recent or significant)

• Brownsword, Lisa; Carney, David; Oberndorf, Patricia,"The Opportunities and Complexities of Applying Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Components," CrossTalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, Volume 11, Number 4, April 1998.
     
  
• Oberndorf, Patricia, "COTS and Open Systems", CBS monograph series. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, February 1998. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cbs/monographs.html
     
  
• Carney, Davic and Oberndorf, Patricia, "The Commandments of COTS: Still in Search of the Promised Land," CrossTalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, May 1997.
     
  
• Meyers, B. Craig and Oberndorf, Patricia, Managing Software Acquisition: Open Systems and COTS Products, ISBN 0-201-70454-4, 2001, Addison-Wesley.
     
  

Education

• BS in Computer Science from Oregon State University
• MS in Computer Science from the University of California at San Diego

Professional Memberships and Activities

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Contact Information

Electronic mail address: po@sei.cmu.edu

Phone: +1-412-268-6138

Fax:  412-268-5758

Room: 5500

© 2008 Carnegie Mellon University