PRINCETON JUNCTION, NJ, May 16, 2007 –The International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG), an industry leader in software measurement and analysis, will honor Barry Boehm with a special lifetime achievement award for his dedication to advancing software engineering and measurement. The award will be presented at this year’s International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) on May 22, 2007 by Mauricio Aguiar, the current president of IFPUG, who will travel from Brazil for the event.
Anyone interested in the financial aspects of software engineering is familiar with the name Barry W. Boehm. The University of Southern California’s guru has a permanent seat as a leader in software economics over the last 40 years. According to industry expert Capers Jones, Boehm claims to have been first exposed to software economics on his first day in the software business back in 1955. His supervisor took him on a walking tour of the computer, a now long gone ERA 1103. The supervisor said, “We’re paying this computer 600 hundred dollars an hour and we’re paying you two dollars an hour and I want you to act accordingly.” Boehm started worrying about saving computer microseconds, a habit hard to unlearn when software costs started tipping scales the other way.
Few people have contributed as much to the field of software engineering as Barry Boehm. As he approaches semi-retirement, important luminaries from both academia and industry will gather to honor him at a symposium, Software Engineering: The Legacy of Barry W. Boehm, to be held in Minneapolis on May 22, 2007. The event will feature the likes of Larry Berntein, Rick Selby, Art Pyster, Tom DeMarco, Vic Basili, Walker Royce, Kevin Sullivan, Lee Osterweil, and Fred Brooks. Each will present a different part of Boehm’s incredibly rich legacy. Boehm himself will contribute the presentation “Thoughts for the Future.”