ICSE2000: Window on the World - Issue 2 - Marv Zelkowitz Interview

WOW caught up with 2000’s SIGSOFT Distinguished Service award winner right after Wednesday’s awards ceremony. Marv (U. MD) was SIGSOFT’s 3rd Chair (1979-81) and later chaired ICSE co-sponsor IEEE CS TCSE (’84-86), was Program Chair for the 18th ICSE (Berlin, ‘96), has edited or been on the boards of at least 4 important journals in the field, and has played various organizing roles for more software engineering (SE) events than he can count. A most deserving award winner! But not so heady as to avoid the hot seat of WOW’s investigative reporting:

Q: What are the biggest changes you’ve observed in SIGSOFT the last 20+ years?

I can think of a good and a bad. The good is that, while it was unclear when SIGSOFT was founded in the 70’s if it filled a need worth filling, today it is unquestionably recognized as valuable. The bad is that, while the SE research community embraces SIGSOFT’s value, it has always been a hard sell to the practitioner/developer part of industry.

Q: Same question, but about the SE field and community as a whole?

A little frustrating from a researcher’s perspective — the 70’s were about doing software better on mainframes, and I see the field attacking the same or similar problems at the PC level now. It just seems we should have transferred and adapted more solutions. Yet, software is better now than then, especially, for example, software reliability. Would you have wanted to fly on airplanes in 1975 that were 99% dependent on the software methods of those times?

Q: I assume you regard the crowning achievement of your career to be the NIST/ECMA Reference Model for Software Engineering Environment Frameworks you co-principal authored with Tricia Oberndorf, Lolo Penedo, Ant Earl, and me, right?

No! It wasn’t any one event (and it wouldn’t be that if I had to pick one). Instead, it has been a sense of being right at the center of the long, ongoing process of evolving the software industry to include science and engineering. This is the essence of our work at Maryland and Fraunhofer, using experiments to validate claims and find the intrinsic principles.

Q: Finally, what has been the most enjoyable aspect of your career?

No doubt it has been working with Vic Basili (also a winner today, of SIGSOFT’s "Outstanding Research Award") at Maryland for almost my entire career!

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