Paul Clements appointed Vice President of BigLever

Posted by Michael Stal on Nov 25, 2011

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BigLever, one of the few companies focusing on product line engineering, has recently appointed Dr. Paul Clements Vice President of Customer Success. Clements is well-known as one of the pioneers of software architecture. In his 17 years at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (CMU SEI), He co-authored three important books on software architecture and  helped establish the ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method). One of the books a software architect must read is “Software Architecture in Practice” by Len Bass, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman. Among his work on fundaments and practices co-author Clements was heavily involved in product line engineering research at the SEI and co-initiated events such as the SPLC (Software Product Line Conference).

Why is that of interest for the software architecture community? Software Product Lines are increasingly gaining momentum within the industry as they foster systematic re-use in program families. So called product families comprise products or solutions that share a common domain, address common markets, and reveal a lot of commonalities. PLE might not be interesting for one-off application development, but it definitely  is for many industrial systems or Common-off-the-Shelf products. The appointment of Clements shows that companies that focus on this technology area like BigLever are now trying to attract experts in product line engineering and software architecture to better address the increasing market.

Dr. Charles Krueger, founder and CEO of BigLever of Software, Inc. BigLever is exclusively focusing on product line engineering for many years. BigLever's core product Gears enables product lines in software-intensive organizations including support for asset configuration, feature profiles and product configurations. Among the partners and customers of BigLevers are companies such as IBM-Rational, Microsoft, or Perforce.

According to Krueger,

The addition of Paul to our management team is a major milestone not only for BigLever, but for the systems and software engineering community. Having been at the forefront of the PLE field for almost two decades, Paul's mastery of leading-edge PLE concepts and his exceptional ability to articulate practical ways of advancing engineering practices will be invaluable to BigLever, to our customers, and to the continued adoption and expansion of PLE in the industry

The responsibilities of Clements will be to assist BigLever customers in applying the latest Software Product Line Engineering approaches, creating optimized deployment plans, and establishing successful ongoing SPL practices. Clements will also continue to publish articles, give talks, and create solution concepts for product line engineering.

It remains to be seen whether the appointment of Clements can boost the market success of BigLever. It also will be interesting when product line engineering will become more a commodity than a research topic.

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   Good News!!!

   by Eduardo Cruz

   A great professional for a great company!!! Let's spread software product lines!!!

   Reply

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   Really?

   by Cameron Purdy

   Slow news day?

   Reply

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   Re: Really?

   by Alex Blewitt

   I had the same comment. Apparently, he's someone famous that most people had never heard of before.

   Reply

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   Re: Really?

   by Gisela Ebner

   Clements is one of the VIPs in this area. This is definitely an interesting news. I find remarks like "he's someone famous that most people had never heard of" is more telling about your knowledge of the architecture community than about the relevance of the news. Guys, if you are not architects, get informed.

   Reply