Raymond J. Madachy

Research Assistant Professor
Industrial and Systems Engineering Department
Interim Director, Systems Architecting and Engineering Program
Principal, USC Center for Systems and Software Engineering
Email: madachy@usc.edu

Research Interests

  • Modeling and simulation of processes for architecting and engineering of complex software-intensive systems. 
  • Economic analysis and value-based engineering of software-intensive systems. 
  • Quantitative methods for systems risk management; systems and software measurement, process improvement and quality. 
  • Integrating systems engineering and software engineering disciplines, and empirical-based research with process simulation.

Dr. Madachy has 25 years of management and technical experience in industry. Prior to full-time research at USC he was Chief Science Officer at Cost Xpert Group.  Previously he was Chief Scientist at C-bridge Institute, where he led consulting and training in software methodologies and economic analysis.  Before that he was manager of the Software Engineering Process Group at at Litton Guidance and Control Systems achieving SEI CMM Level 4 after being the lead for software metrics, cost estimation and risk management at Litton Data Systems.  He has also served as a Visiting Scientist with the Software Engineering Institute. 

His book Software Process Dynamics will be out in December 2007, and he is a co-author of Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II. His consulting clients have included Chevron, Northrop-Grumman, Seagate, Motorola, Lucent, USAA, Blue Cross and other Fortune 500 firms.  He has also performed as an expert witness on software cost, quality and contractual disputes.

He completed his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC in 1994. For his dissertation research, he developed a software project dynamics model for process cost, schedule and risk assessment. He also has an M.S. in Systems Science from the University of California, San Diego and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton. He is a senior member of IEEE, ACM, INCOSE, Tau Beta Pi, Pi Tau Sigma, serves on the program committees for the International Forum on COCOMO and Software Cost Modeling, the SPW/ProSim workshop, and has served on program committees for several other conferences. He previously served on the LA Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) steering committee.

He lives with his wife Nancy and twin daughters in San Diego, CA. Ray enjoys bicycling and hiking up mountains in his spare time.

Publications

Classes

  • CSCI 577B - Software Engineering II (Spring 2006)
  • CSCI 510 - Software Management and Economics (Fall 2005)
  • CSCI 577B - Software Engineering II (Spring 2003)
  • CSCI 577B - Software Engineering II (Spring 2002) (guest lectures only)
  • CSCI 577A - Software Engineering I (Fall 2001) (guest lectures only)
  • CSCI 599 - Software Process Modeling (Fall 1999)
  • CSCI 577B - Design and Construction of Large Software Systems (Spring 1999)
  • CSCI 577B - Design and Construction of Large Software Systems (Spring 1998)
  • ISE 435 - Discrete Systems Simulation (Fall 1996)

    • Research Projects

    Ray developed the Expert COCOMO II application, an online software cost estimation tool with expert risk assessment.  See the article Heuristic Risk Assessment Using Cost Factors in IEEE Software, May/June 1997.

    Selected Publications

    • R. Madachy, B. Boehm and J. Lane, Spiral Lifecycle Increment Modeling for New Hybrid Processes, Software Process Improvement and Practice, 2007 
    • R. Madachy, Integrating Business Value and Software Process Modeling, Proceedings of the 2005 Software Process Workshop, Beijing, China, Springer-Verlag, May 2005
    • Madachy R, Simulation in Software Engineering, Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, Second Edition, Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 2001
    • Madachy R, New Processes for Rapid Software Development (invited talk), Proceedings of the Fifth World Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics and the Seventh International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis, IEEE Computer Society, Orlando, FL, July 2001
    • Boehm, B, Abts C, Brown W, Chulani S, Clark B, Horowitz  E, Madachy R, Reifer D, Steece B, Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II, Prentice-Hall, August 2000
    • Kellner M, Madachy R, Raffo D, Software Process Simulation Modeling: Why? What? How?, Journal of Systems and Software, Spring 1999
    • Boehm, B, Egyed A, Kwan J, Port D, Shah A, Madachy R., Using the WinWin Spiral Model: A Case Study, IEEE Computer, July 1998
    • Madachy R, Heuristic Risk Assessment Using Cost Factors, IEEE Software, May/June 1997
    • Madachy R, System Dynamics Modeling of an Inspection-based Process, Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Software Engineering, Berlin, Germany, March 1996
    • Madachy R, Modeling Software Processes with System Dynamics: Current Developments, Proceedings of the 1996 System Dynamics Conference, Cambridge, MA, System Dynamics Society, July 1996
    • Madachy R, Measuring Inspections at Litton, Software Quality Assurance, Ridgetop Publishing, Silvertown, OR, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1996 and Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Applications of Software Measurement, Orlando, FL, Software Quality Engineering, October 1995 (best paper award)
    • Madachy R, Process improvement analysis of a corporate inspection program, Proceedings of the Seventh Software Engineering Process Group Conference, May 1995

      • Last update 10/31/07