Bill Curtis

Bill Curtis (born 1948) is a software scientist best known for leading the development of the Capability Maturity Model and the People CMM in the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and for championing the spread of software process improvement and software measurement globally. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to software process improvement and measurement. He was named to the 2022 class of ACM Fellows, "for contributions to software process, software measurement, and human factors in software engineering".

Personal life Bill Curtis was born in Meridian, Texas in 1948. He graduated from the Fort Worth Country Day School in 1967 where the Bill Curtis Award is given annually to the undergraduate boy whose performance contributes the most to the athletic program. He received his B.A. in mathematics, psychology, and theater in 1971 from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He received his M.A. in 1974 from The University of Texas. He received his Ph.D. specializing in organizational psychology and statistics in 1975 from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He has published 4 books, over 240 articles, and has been on the editorial board of 7 academic journals. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Career He started his career as a Research Assistant Professor in the Organizational Research Group at the University of Washington where he also taught statistics in the Department of Psychology and performed research on programmer skills, leadership, and sports psychology. He entered software engineering in 1978 as the Manager of Software Management Research at Information System Programs in General Electric's Space Division (now a division of Lockheed Martin) in Arlington, Virginia, where he led research on software metrics and programming practices. From 1980 to 1983 he developed a global software productivity and quality measurement system in ITT's Programming Technology Center.

During 1983–1990 he founded the Human Interface Laboratory and later led Design Process Research at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), the American Fifth Generation Computer Research Consortium in Austin, Texas. During 1991–1992 he was the Director of the Software Process Program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he led the projects that produced the Capability Maturity Model for Software Process (CMM). The CMM for Software Process Version 1.1 was published as an IEEE Software article in July 1993,

With support from Nedbank in South Africa, Dr. Curtis and Charles Weber developed a Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) to extend the benefits of CMM and CMMI which are project-based, to the continuous value-chain processes of a business. The BPMM includes several new innovations in maturity models based on a decade of experience in applying them to guide process improvement programs. The BPMM has been applied and validated in the banking, electronic equipment manufacturing, medical services, and gaming industries. The BPMM has recently become a supported specification (standard) of the Object Management Group's Business Process Management Initiative.

Software measurement Dr. Curtis led a team at General Electric Space Division that was the first to prove experimentally that software metrics could be used to predict programmer performance and quality. His group provided early leadership in studying programming practices experimentally. He next developed a global software productivity and quality measurement system while at ITT's Programming Technology Center which allowed established corporate baselines across different business lines in one of the world's largest corporate conglomerates. He has promoted the use of advanced statistic methods in managing software productivity and quality.

In 2009 Dr. Curtis became the founding Director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ) that was created with joint sponsorship from the SEI and OMG. CISQ's primary objective has been to create standards for measuring the size and quality attributes of software at the code level. Under his leadership CISQ has recently had a standard for computing Automated Function Points approved by OMG. CISQ has also released a standard for computing automated measures of software reliability, performance efficiency, security, and quality.

Design process Curtis has been an advocate for studying the psychological and behavioral processes of software development. In 1986 he established Design Process Research in the Software Technology Program at MCC. Over the next four years his team published research that challenged the existing top-down paradigms of software design. They interviewed design teams on large software to reveal the greatest challenges they encountered in designing large software-intensive systems. They videotaped design team meetings over a three-month period to see how designs actually emerged from the team dialectic. They also videotaped individual software designers solving problems to uncover the cognitive processes of design. Their insights have been cited as an argument for the use of agile development methods in software.

User interface Dr. Curtis led the creation of MCC's Human Interface Laboratory and for more sensible approaches to protecting the intellectual property in user interfaces.