Brad Hodgins, a member of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s Software Engineering Division, has received distinct honors from Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Hodgins was selected as the 2009 SEI Member Award Winner as an outstanding contributor to the Team Software Process (TSP).

This article and accompanying photo appeared in the April 2009 edition of the SEI newsletter, The Monitor, and are reprinted here with the permission of writer/editor Heidi Price. “Brad is a great representative of our SEI members,” Ms. Price exclaimed, “and he’s so deserving of this award. We encourage others to join us at www.sei.edu/membership.”

Hodgins is the recipient of the Outstanding Contributor Award and is a Team Software Process (TSP) coach and instructor at NAVAIR. Hodgins has worked at NAVAIR for 25 years and started out as a software lead at the Weapons and Tactics Analysis Center. After that, he went to work in avionics software as Software Engineering Task Team leader, where he worked on the AV-8B Joint Systems/Software Support Activity Integrated Product Team. “For those not familiar with the AV-8B Harrier, it is the one flown by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie True Lies,” Hodgins explained.

It was about this time that Hodgins began training in Personal Software Process (PSP) and TSP. Also around this time, he began working closely with NAWC Weapons Division’s Jeffrey Schwalb, SEI Member and 2007 Outstanding Representative winner. “He really took TSP in and made that the way he lived and breathed,” said Schwalb, who nominated Hodgins for the award. As evidence, Schwalb points out that within two or three years’ time, Hodgins’ team “made extraordinary advances in getting better products out in less time to the fleet.”

In 2004, Hodgins assumed his current role and now oversees the work of six TSP teams. He also teaches the following courses at NAVAIR: PSP for Engineers, Parts I and II; Managing TSP Teams; TSP Executive Seminar; Team Process Integration (TPI) Team Member Training; and TSP/PSP Data Analysis. Through classes at the SEI, Hodgins became an SEI-Authorized PSP Instructor, an SEI-Certified PSP Developer, and an SEI-Certified TSP Coach. Hodgins said he is pleased with his latest career turn because it allows him to make software processes as efficient as possible while also creating new processes.

After he became a coach, Hodgins began noticing trends in certain actions, or priorities, that TSP coaches needed when working with teams that are struggling with implementing TSP. He took those priorities and made what he has termed the “LAMP” model. The LAMP model is now used by NAVAIR TSP coaches when evaluating the thoroughness
and quality of a software team’s implementation of TSP concepts and determining how much coaching should be applied. Hodgins applied for a patent on the model in July 2007.