CMU Silicon Valley welcomes Philippe Kruchten

Why is software so bad? (Is it?)

With software so pervasive in most aspect of our lives, we all have endless stories to tell about its inadequacies, about bugs, failures or and even complete disasters. We have heard of the “software crisis” ever since the late 1970’s and we seem to have never gotten out of it. The “Chaos reports” spoke year after year of software project failures in the range of 30% to 50%. In this presentation, I will review the actual state of affairs: is software really that bad? I will sort out the facts from the myths, investigate the root causes, and discuss prospects for the future. When software is bad or inadequate, how can we improve the situation? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Philippe Kruchten is a full professor of software engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. He holds an NSERC Chair in Design Engineering. He joined UBC in 2004 after a 30+ year career in industry, where he worked mostly in with large software-intensive systems design, in the domains of telecommunication, defense, aerospace and transportation. Some of his experience is embodied in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) whose development he directed from 1995 till 2003, when Rational Software was bought by IBM. His current research interests still reside mostly with software architecture, and in particular architectural decisions and the decision process, as well as software engineering processes, in particular the application of agile processes in large and globally distributed teams. He teaches courses in entrepreneurship, software project management, and design.

He is a senior member of IEEE (Computer Society), an IEEE Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP), a member of ACM, INCOSE, CEEA, the founder of Agile Vancouver, and a Professional Engineer in British Columbia. He has a diploma in mechanical engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lyon, and a doctorate degree in information systems from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris.