David Carrington

Biography

David Carrington graduated with a BSc (Hons) in computer science in 1975 and in 1984 completed his PhD, both at the University of New South Wales. In 1989, he moved to the University of Queensland where he is now a Reader in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and Head of the Division of Computer Software. David led the project that introduced a software engineering degree at the University of Queensland. The first cohort of software engineering students graduated from this program in 2000. David has been an associated academic of the Software Verification Research Centre, since its establishment in 1991 at the University of Queensland.

David's research interests span several areas of software engineering. In particular, he is involved with projects that seek to apply formal methods to practical software engineering tasks such as testing and user interface development. His teaching interests are equally broad but with special interest in software design and software process.

David recently spent ten months as a visiting scientist at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. During this period, he worked as a member of the PSP/TSP Initiative. Following his period as a visiting scientist, David spent eight weeks on an A.D. Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship learning how the Boeing Company in the United States organises its software development.

Title:  A software process: method or magic?

Abstract

Being a skilful software developer requires much more than knowledge of one or more programming languages and operating systems. In this talk, I will discuss the importance of process for establishing software engineering as a professional discipline. I will focus on the Personal Software Process^SM (PSP) and the Team Software Process^SM (TSP), both developed by Watts Humphrey, as particular examples designed to help software engineers produce high quality products on schedule and within budget. Results from industry show dramatic improvements in both software quality and project schedule for teams using the TSP. I will also review some alternative approaches to software process that have recently been promoted. Extreme Programming is probably the best known but there is a family of similar approaches that have grouped themselves under the title of "agile development methods".