2015-16 Peebles Memorial Lecture in Information Technology

The 2015-16 Peebles Memorial Lecture in Information Technology was presented by Dr. Felix Bachmann on April 16, 2015, in conjunction with the Research Services Expo in the Herman B Wells Library at Indiana University. Dr. Bachmann, senior technical staff member of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI), presented "Is Software Engineering Obsolete?"

Abstract: The term "software engineering", coined by Margaret Hamilton, was first used in 1968 as a title for the world's first conference on software engineering. The purpose of software engineering at that time until today has been to address poor-quality software, and to get a project's time and budget under control. Since then, software engineering is seen as a heavy-weight, document-driven activity that is undesirable for any "real" software developer. It is more fun to implement something, learn, and improve. Many agile projects have shown that this approach does work and produces results fairly quickly. So, is software engineering dead? In this lecture, Dr. Bachmann discusses tasks every developer executes when implementing systems. Some execute these tasks conscientiously to control the outcome; other do it sub conscientiously. He explores the meaning of software engineering in our modern times.

Bio: Dr. Bachmann is a co-author of the "Attribute-Driven Design Method", a contributor to and instructor for the ATAM^® Evaluator Training, and a co-author of "Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond". Besides researching software engineering topics, such as efficient design and use of software architectures to develop high-quality products, Dr. Bachmann also helps businesses and institutions implement modern software engineering practices (for example, he helped the Mexican Stock Exchange create one of the world's fastest trading engines, on time and on budget. Before joining the SEI, Dr. Bachmann was a software engineer in Corporate Research at Robert Bosch GmbH, where he worked with software development departments to address the issues of enhanced features and higher-quality in call-control software that's at the core of telecommunications products.

Watch Dr. Bachmann's lecture (via YouTube).