Barbara Ann Kitchenham is a retired British computer scientist and

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

known for her research on

systematic review A systematic review is a scholarly synthesis of the evidence on a clearly presented topic using critical methods to identify, define and assess research on the topic. A systematic review extracts and interprets data from published studies on ...

s in software engineering and on

evidence-based practice Evidence-based practice is the idea that occupational practices ought to be based on scientific evidence. The movement towards evidence-based practices attempts to encourage and, in some instances, require professionals and other decision-makers ...

in software engineering. She is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

of computer science at

Keele University Keele University is a Public university#United Kingdom, public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, it was granted uni ...

Education and career

Kitchenham was a student at the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

. She received a bachelor's degree with joint honours in mathematics and statistics in 1969, and a master's degree in statistics in 1970. In 1972 she completed a Ph.D. through the Department of Mining and Mineral Engineering. She worked in industry as a statistician before joining

International Computers Limited International Computers Limited (ICL) was a British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002. It was formed through a merger of International Computers and Tabulators (ICT), English Ele ...

(ICL) in the mid-1970s as a systems programmer, later working there on

software metric In software engineering and development, a software metric is a standard of measure of a degree to which a software system or process possesses some property. Even if a metric is not a measurement (metrics are functions, while measurements are t ...

s. After ten years at ICL, and two years as a reader in the Centre for Software Reliability of

City, University of London City, University of London was a public university from 1966 to 2024 in London, England. It merged with St George's, University of London to form City St George's, University of London in August 2024. The names "City, University of London" an ...

, she moved to the

National Computing Centre The National Computing Centre (NCC) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation in the United Kingdom. After the original organisation was liquidated in 2010, Redholt Limited changed its name to the National Compu ...

in Manchester in 1988. Her subsequent affiliations have included

NICTA NICTA (formerly named National ICT Australia Ltd) was Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence and is now known as CSIRO's Data61. The term "Centre of Excellence" is common marketing terminology ...

in Australia, and Keele University.

Recognition

Kitchenham's 2004 paper "Evidence-based software engineering", with Tore Dybå and Magne Jørgensen, was the 2014 recipient of the ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award. In 2019, the

IEEE Computer Society IEEE Computer Society (commonly known as the Computer Society or CS) is a technical society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated to computing, namely the major areas of hardware, software, standards and people ...

Technical Committee on Software Engineering gave Kitchenham their Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Leadership Award.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kitchenham, Barbara Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British computer scientists British women computer scientists British software engineers Software engineering researchers Alumni of the University of Leeds Academics of City, University of London Academics of Keele University