Kevin Sullivan is on the faculty in the Department of Computer Science in the University of Virginia.  His research is in software engineering broadly,
with emphases on modularity in design, software economics, and software dependability, in particular.  In the area of software economics, Sullivan is
developing foundations for a strategic approach to software product, process, program, portfolio and policy design based on value maximization criteria.

Sullivan was perhaps the first to attempt to apply "real options  thinking" to a comprehensive analysis of software design and engineering concepts.  (By contrast, Baldwin and Clark, had previously applied software design concepts to the development of a theory of modularity in design based on real options.) Sullivan continues to lead the software engineering research community toward a holistic, value-based formulation of the objectives of software development, and toward the development of concepts, tools, methods and policies for improving the economic outcomes of software development.

Sullivan's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation under a grant entitled "Foundations of Software Design in Theories of Contingent Value," (CCR-9804078).  Sullivan was the organizer and Chair of the First and Second International Workshops on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research, held at the flagship international conference of the software engineering community, namely the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), in 1999 and 2000 (June).  Sullivan is author or co-author of several foundational papers in the
area of software economics, including a research roadmap for the next ten years, to appear in a definitive special volume, The Future of Software Engineering.

 Sullivan is building  the internet web sites http://softwareeconomics.org and http://softwareeconomics.com as centralized sources of further and related information on software economics and strategic investment perspectives on software-intensive system development and management.

Selected Publications

Sullivan, K.J., P. Chalasani, S. Jha and V. Sazawal, “Software Design as an Investment Activity: A Real Options Perspective,” in Real Options and Business Srategy: Applications to Decision Making, L. Trigeorgis, consulting editor, Risk Books, December 1999.

B. Boehm and K.J. Sullivan, “Software Economics: A Roadmap,” in The Future of Software Engineering, special volume, A. Finkelstein, Ed., 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, June, 2000 (to appear).

B. Boehm and K.J. Sullivan, "Software Economics: Status and Prospects," invited paper, Special Millenium Issue, Information and Software Technology 41, 1999, pp. 937-946.

Sullivan, K.J., “Software Design: The Options Approach,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Software Architecture Workshop, Joint Proceedings of the SIGSOFT '96 Workshops, San Francisco, CA, October, 1996, pp. 15--18.

Last modified: Thu Apr 9 22:51:45 2000