Rombach

Abstract:

Software has become an indispensable part of most products and services. As a result
the need to "engineer software" professionally with high quality at low cost has
become important to all branches of industry. The supporting scientific discipline
called "software engineering", on the other hand, has matured very slowly, and has
only just now arrived at the verge of making a real contribution to truly professionalizing the "engineering of software". This presentation reviews the historic
evolution of both the profession of "engineering software" as well as the scientific
discipline of "software engineering", points out their symbiotic relationship, and
closes with an outlook into a visionary future full of challenges for practitioners,
researchers and teachers.

CV:

H. Dieter Rombach received the B.S. degree (Vordiplom) in mathematics and the M.S. degree (Diplom) in mathematics and computer science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Ph.D. degree (Dr.rer.nat.) in computer science from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1975, 1978 and 1984, respectively.

Dr. Rombach is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern, and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Previous affiliations included:

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, USA (1986-1991)

Member of the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), a joint venture between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, USA (1987-1991)

Member of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, (UMIACS), USA (1987-1991)

Visiting Scientist, Carnegie-Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, USA (summer 1987 + summer 1988)

Visiting Research Associate, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, USA (1984-1986)

Research and Teaching Staff Member, Department of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (1979-1984)

Research Staff Member, Institute for Technical Data Processing (IDT), Nuclear Research Center, Karlsruhe, Germany (1978-1979)

His research interests include software methodologies, process modeling, software reuse, measurement of software processes and its products, and automated software engineering environments. Dr. Rombach has received the NSF's Presidential Young Investigator Award for his work in software engineering in 1990. He has published more than 60 papers on software measurement and its application to maintenance and quality assurance, software process modeling and software reuse. He has been involved in several projects aimed at introducing measurement into industrial settings.

Dr. Rombach served as Guest Editor for the IEEE Software Magazine Special Issues on Software Quality Assurance (September 19979 and Measurement-based Software Process Improvement (July 1994). His professional activities include serving on the editorial boards of IEEE Software Magazine, Journal of Systems and Software, International Journal of Empirical Software Engineering and International Journal of Software Process and serving on technology advisory boards for state and federal government in Germany. Currently he serves as general chair of the 18th International Software Engineering Conference in Berlin, Germany, March 1996. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the German Computer Society (GI).

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