[Colloq] Talk Given by the School of Engineering **TODAY, 4:30pm, 440 Egan**

[Rachel Bates]

MSIS Program   ---   SPECIAL SEMINAR

Tuesday, May 27 at 4:30 PM
Room 440 Egan

Prof. Karl Reed of LaTrobe University, Australia
Chair of IEEE's Technical Council of Software Engineering

"Some Problems in Software Engineering:
Technological Failures and “New” Software Processes"

Since the beginning of the projection of Software Engineering, there has
been a conflict.
The objective of an engineering discipline of software development is at
odds with cultural issue of software development as a “social” activity
undertaken by skilled artisans.  This tension divides the world in to two
camps who perceive themselves as opposed, because the latter undermine the
claims of the former, and the former appear to be robbing the latter of
their raison d’etre. In the limit, one sees CMM and CMMI, and at the other
the personal-process inspecific agile processes.

This talk explores the contradictions that have arisen between the “pure”
view of software engineering and the craft based practice, and notes their
origins.  It will use some of the work by Baragry, which sheds some light on
the differences between SE and Engineering, and discusses some technical
problems which if solved, remove the need for agile processes except in
certain circumstances.  It will specifically address the issue of “loss of
creativity”, using examples from modern architectural design to show that
the use of engineering discipline in the real world does not destroy
creativity.  It will conclude by discussing a major impediment to the
development of SE as a discipline, the absence of domain specific software
engineering.

About the Speaker

Prof. Karl Reed is currently a Visiting Scientist at the Fruanhofer IESE in
Kaiserslautrern. Earlier this year he was a Visiting Professor at Bond
University’s School of Information Technology on leave from the Department
of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at La Trobe University in
Australia , where he is an Associate Professor.  He spent 12 years in
industry, in early CAD and real-time computer based telephone exchange
systems before moving to academia.  He has taught at Monash University,
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.  At La Trobe, he was the Director
of the AAITP on CASE and Hypertext from 1989 to 1997.  He is a pioneer of SE
education in Australia and has served on the program committees of ICSE and
IWCASE. He was President of the IWCASE Board from 1995 to 1999.  In 1986, he
worked with Prof. Vic Basili and Dr. Dieter Rombach at the University of
Maryland. He is also an initiator of the Asian Pacific Software Engineering
Conference and a member of its Steering Committee and brought ICSE to
Australia in 1992. He is a Governor of the IEEE-CS, chair of the Technical
Council for Software Engineering. He His IEEE-CS committees include the
Standards, Membership and Technical Activity Boards.
He is a Fellow and Honorary Life member of the Australian Computer Society,
Director of its Technical Board (Computer Systems and Software Engineering),
a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia.  He has  also been
Consultant Editor to Australian Computer World, and to Computer Week.  He
holds an undergraduate qualification in engineering from RMIT, and a
Master's Degree (by research) from Monash University Clayton.
He is an IEEE-CS Golden Core holder and was awarded an IEEE Third Millennium
Medal in at the end of 1999. In 2000, he received the Australian Computer
Society Victorian Branch’s  Murton Award for outstanding service.