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Oral History of Watts Humphrey

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Oral History of Watts Humphrey Oral History of Watts Humphrey Interviewed by: Grady Booch Recorded: June 17 - 22, 2009 Via Skype CHM Reference number: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Oral History of Watts Humphrey Computer History Museum Oral History for Watts S. Humphrey Topics Boeing; Team Software Process (TSP); Personal Software Process (PSP); Software Engineering Institute (SEI); Microsoft; Intuit; Embry-Riddle University; planning; Department of Defense; National Medal of Technology; agile programming; SCRUM; MOBIDIC; IBM; OS/360; FORTRAN; FAA; Watson, Thomas J, 1914-1993; Poughkeepsie; Endicott; RCA; SABRE; IBM System 360 Contributors Booch, Grady, Interviewer Humphrey, Watts S, Interviewee Spicer, Dag, Editor Publisher: Computer History Museum Date: 2009-06 Place of Publication: Skype Extent: 177 p. Collection Title: Oral Histories Online Accession Number: 102702107 CHM Ref: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Page 2 of 184 Oral History of Watts Humphrey Table of Contents The Oral History Background 6 The Watts Humphrey Oral History 6 Watts Humphrey Biographical Information 6 Grady Booch Biographical Information 6 Day 1 AM: June 17, 2009 7 Beginnings 7 The Navy 12 College Years 13 My First Job 15 Wrestling 16 Running the Betatron 18 Sylvania 19 Northeastern University 22 Building a Computer Group 25 Applying to IBM 28 The Watson Interview 29 The Brokerage Studies 31 The FAA Bid 32 FAA Bid Pricing 35 The IBM 360 Announcement 37 IBM Time Sharing 39 Marketing the IBM Model 67 41 Day 1 PM: June 17, 2009 43 IBM Director of Programming 44 The Learson Commitment Meeting 45 Just Coding and Testing 47 Meeting the Plan 48 The Model 91 Announcement 49 The Development Reorganization 51 Day 2 AM: June 18, 2009 53 Family History 53 The IBM Board Meeting on Program Pricing 55 Phase Plans 57 The Data-Management Interface 58 The Fortune Interview 60 Program Pricing 62 The IBM Law Suits 63 CHM Ref: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Page 3 of 184 Oral History of Watts Humphrey Table of Contents (continued) Day 2 AM: June 18, 2009 (continued) The Virtual Memory Decision 65 Skiing with Tom Watson 66 The Endicott Lab 67 Why RCA Failed 69 Corporate Policy 73 Contract Problems 75 The IBM Business System 77 Other Legal Issues 78 The IBM PC Story 81 International Business 82 Day 2 PM: June 18, 2009 84 Another Boston Story 84 The Program Pricing Flap 85 The FS System 86 The SHARE Meeting 87 The MFT System 88 The MVS Review 89 Release 15/16 90 The Compatibility Letter 91 Vision of the Future 92 Technology Assessment 93 Semiconductor Quality 94 Software Quality and Process 95 CI 105 96 Measuring Software Quality 97 Improving Software Quality 98 The Amdahl Story 99 My Outrageous Commitment 100 The IBM Prodigy System 101 Joining SEI 103 Doing vs. Being 104 The SEI Director Was Fired 105 The Software Acquisition Problem 105 The IBM Assessments 107 The SEI 5-Level Maturity Model 108 The CMM Steering Committee 110 The PSP Research 111 The Process Conferences 113 The PSP Course 115 Using the PSP 117 CHM Ref: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Page 4 of 184 Oral History of Watts Humphrey Table of Contents (continued) Day 2 PM: June 18, 2009 (continued) IBM Tool Development 117 Day 3 AM: June 19, 2009 119 The Speak Out Article 119 Moving to the SEI 121 The Aston Tate Story 123 Nico Haberman and the SEI Strategy 125 Measuring Myself 126 Initial PSP Use 129 Defective Software 131 Formal Methods 133 The Yield Measure 134 Early TSP Trials 137 The Teradyne Team Launch 139 The Task Time Measure 143 Presenting the Teradyne Plan to Management 145 The TSP Team 147 Day 4 AM: June 22, 2009 151 Six Months to Live 151 Expanding TSP Use 154 Lack of Academic Interest 155 International TSP Use 158 Knowledge Work 159 More Example Projects 161 The Boeing B2 System 163 The Large-System Problem 166 Women in Software 168 The Change Problem 168 The National Medal of Technology 170 Agile Methods 175 Open Source Programming 177 Computer Architecture 179 Language Trends 180 The Future 183 Advice to Young People 183 What’s Next 184 CHM Ref: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Page 5 of 184 Oral History of Watts Humphrey The Oral History Background The Watts Humphrey Oral History Dag Spicer, Director of the Computer History Museum in San Jose, California, arranged for Grady Booch to interview Watts Humphrey. This document is an edited transcript of that interview. Note, however, that the text exactly follows the interview except of minor editorial corrections to correct obvious transcription errors. In this oral history, Mr. Humphrey describes his early life and formative experiences as well as his employment history, first as a senior manager at IBM, then as an early member of the Software Engineering Institute. Humphrey covers a wide range of topics and companies and the software challenges they have faced. Humphrey also describes the Team Software Process and the Personal Software Process (TSP and PSP) methods for developing quality software. Watts Humphrey Biographical Information Watts Humphrey is a Fellow at the Software Engineering Institute which he joined after a 27- year career at IBM. He authored the original version of the SEI’s CMMI process maturity framework and developed the Personal Software Process (PSP)1 and the Team Software Process (TSP). He holds graduate degrees in physics and business administration and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE. His publications include many technical papers and 11 books. He holds five US patents. In 2005 at a White House ceremony, the President of the United States awarded him the National Medal of Technology. This is the nation’s highest honor for technical achievement. Grady Booch Biographical Information Grady Booch is Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and was Chief Scientist of Rational Software Corporation before its 2003 acquisition by IBM. He is recognized internationally for his innovative work on software architecture, collaborative development environments, and software engineering and is one of the original authors of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). He is author of several hundred articles on software engineering and six books and he originated the terms and practices of Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and collaborative development environments (CDE). Grady is an IBM Fellow, an ACM Fellow, a World Technology Network Fellow, a Software Development Forum Visionary, a recipient of Dr. Dobb’s Excellence in Programming award as well as three Jolt Awards. He was a founding board member of the Agile Alliance, the Hillside Group, and the Worldwide Institute of Software Architects. He also serves on the advisory board of the International Association of Software Architecture, is a member of the IEEE Software editorial board, and has conducted several oral history interviews for luminaries such as John Backus and Fred Brooks. Grady received his bachelor of science from the United States Air Force Academy and his 1 Personal Software Process, PSP, Team Software Process, and TSP are Service Marks of Carnegie Mellon University. CHM Ref: X5584.2010 © 2009 Computer History Museum Page 6 of 184 Oral History of Watts Humphrey master of science in electrical engineering from the University of California in Santa Barbara, CA. Day 1 AM, June 17, 2009 Beginnings Grady Booch: So welcome. This is Grady Booch. I’m here with Watts Humphrey and we’re connecting via Skype because we’re both in different parts of the world. Here we are on a morning of Wednesday, June 17 for an oral history on behalf of the Computer History Museum. So welcome Watts. Thank you very much for joining me. It’s been a long time since you and I have seen one another face to face, so I’m just utterly delighted to have the opportunity to converse with you, so thank you for joining us. Watts Humphrey: I’m delighted and honored to be interviewed, and particularly by you. It’s been 20 years since we were last together and I’m delighted to meet with you again. Booch: Twenty years. Oh, my goodness. Time moves quickly, doesn’t it? Wow. Of course I have as much as hair and I’m as virile as I looked 20 years ago, Humphrey: I can see that. Booch: So let’s begin. I’m going to start off with just some general philosophical questions here and then want to dive into just your life and how you got to where you are and then we’ll end up with where you think the world is going. You’re often considered by many as -- I think you’re called either the grandfather or the father or the godfather of [software] quality. There are various monikers given to you and, indeed, you’ve been honored by the president by receiving the National Medal of Technology back in-- that was 2003, was it not? Humphrey: It was the 2003 medal. They actually didn’t award it until 2005. There’d been a few things going on then and President Bush didn’t have time but it was a marvelous event. Booch: Good and we’ll talk about that. I mean, you truly have made a seminal difference in the art and the practice of software engineering, especially with regards to elements of quality. So I’m just going to ask a very broad question at first because this has been your life. What is quality and how does one measure it and how would you rate contemporary software systems in terms of quality? Humphrey: Well, a very general response. Quality is doing the job the way it’s wanted.
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