Software Engineering Institute

December 11, 2024—The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has honored Anita Carleton by naming her an SEI Fellow. Carleton joins a small group of distinguished innovators in software engineering, becoming only the ninth individual recognized with this distinction in the SEI’s 40-year history. Throughout her career at the SEI, she has made numerous, significant technical and leadership contributions to the SEI’s work, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the broader software engineering community and practice.

The SEI awards the position of Fellow to leading SEI researchers and practitioners who have made an outstanding contribution to the work of the SEI and who continue to ensure the success of the institute’s mission. Paul Nielsen, the SEI’s director and CEO, praised Carleton for her significant contributions over a long and productive career. “Anita’s decades of research into software metrics and modern software engineering practices have become foundational for much of the software community,” he said. “Her leadership and mentorship within the SEI have fostered excellence in our staff, and she moves our mission forward by connecting our partners in the government, the private sector, and academic institutions. Anita richly deserves to be included in the select company of SEI Fellows.”

Carleton joined the SEI in its formative years when the institute was in a unique position to define and shape the discipline of software engineering. Carleton worked at the nexus of academia, industry, and government to devise innovative methods, frameworks, algorithms, and courses that not only addressed current challenges but also anticipated future software engineering needs and opportunities. Carleton’s specific contributions were primarily related to the creation, development, and transition of innovative and modern software engineering lifecycle approaches in software measurement and statistical process control for software. They also included the leadership, development, and transition of the widely adopted Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Team Software Process (TSP)/Personal Software Process (PSP), which provided approaches for developing high-quality software and high-performance teams. Carleton worked to establish SEI leadership in software measurement practice worldwide by defining the SEI Core Measures, establishing a measurement program to facilitate data-driven decision-making for the DoD, and researching and innovating statistical process control for software.

The software lifecycle models Carleton helped to develop have been used as benchmarks throughout the software industry worldwide, and the measurement frameworks have been used in developing U.S. government policy and as a primary input to the COCOMO software cost estimation model developed by Dr. Barry Boehm at the University of Southern California. Carleton’s work with the IBM Federal Systems Division on applying statistical process control to Space Shuttle software data was seminal in motivating the application of advanced statistical techniques in software engineering. This research led her to co-author a book in the Addison-Wesley Professional SEI Series in Software Engineering, Measuring the Software Process: Statistical Process Control for Software Process Improvement. For these contributions, IEEE elevated her to IEEE Fellow in 2022.

More recently, Carleton was the primary driver of the influential study and book Architecting the Future of Software Engineering: A National Agenda for Software Engineering Research and Development. Carleton led the national study and initiative to engage the broader software engineering community in creating a multiyear research and development vision, strategy, and roadmap for engineering next-generation software-reliant systems. This agenda is now being pursued in research organizations around the world, is being incorporated into graduate and undergraduate curricula, and is motivating research initiatives and investment actions by the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Carleton’s key leadership positions at the SEI have included director of the Software Engineering Process Management (SEPM) Program and her current role as director of the Software Solutions Division (SSD). In addition to being a member of the SEI’s Executive Leadership Team, she is an IEEE Fellow, chairs the IEEE Software Advisory Board, and served as the general chair of the 2022 International Conference on Software and Systems Processes.

“I was so pleased to be named SEI Fellow—this is an honor of a lifetime,” said Carleton. “I just celebrated 36 years at the SEI. These days, most people don’t stay in an organization for 36 years unless the mission is compelling, motivating, and meaningful and there are talented and passionate people to work with, as well as growth and leadership opportunities. I am fortunate to have built my career at the SEI and to have had the opportunity and platform to impact the discipline of software engineering worldwide.”