Keynotes

"Best Practices and Process Improvement: Myth Meets Measures"

Dr. Richard Turner (George Washington University)

Dr. Richard Turner is a research professor in engineering management and system engineering at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He has developed and acquired software in the private and public sectors, and has consulted for a number of government and commercial organizations. He has led process improvement initiatives in information technology, system engineering, and software acquisition, and was on the original author team for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). In support of the US Department of Defense, he is presently responsible for identifying and transitioning new software technology into the development and acquisition of complex, software-intensive defense systems.

His current research interests include: establishing empirical profiles for software development and acquisition best practices; employing spiral, risk-driven methods in large system-of-systems acquisitions; harmonizing software engineering, systems engineering and acquisition life-cycle models; and, improving the probability of producing correctly functioning, maintainable, and affordable software systems through empirical analysis. He is co-author of two books: Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Addison-Wesley, 2004), co-written with Barry Boehm, and CMMI^SM Distilled (Addison-Wesley 2000, 2004).

Dr. Turner has a BA in Mathematics from Huntingdon College, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and a DSc in Engineering Management from the George Washington University.

"Embedded Software Development -Today and Tomorrow-"

Mr. Takashi Yamamura (Ricoh Company, Ltd.)

General Manager, Multimedia Lab Software R&D Group Ricoh Company, Ltd. In addition to leading the Multimedia Lab of Ricoh's Software R&D Group, Takashi Yamamura is spearheading the adoption of Software Engineering techniques at Ricoh. Following his graduation from the Information Science Department of Kyoto University, Yamamura entered Ricoh, where he rose to become the leader of embedded software development. Beginning in 1996, he spent 5 years in the Ricoh-wide project devoted to raising software quality and productivity by improving the software development process and increasing the use of components. In the second half of 2003, Ricoh began a joint project with the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (Fraunhofer IESE) of Germany. Yamamura heads the project whose goal is to further research into software engineering and software for the next-generation office.