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Prof. Keith Phalp: Research Profile and Background |
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Overview of Research Areas
Professor Phalp is Associate Dean - Head of Software Systems and Psychology at Bournemouth University.
He is particularly interested in the early, most crucial, phases of software projects, and in how best to produce software that meets the needs of its sponsors, stakeholders and users. This involves a variety of research topics including: understanding business needs (strategic and operational), process modelling, software requirements, business and IT alignment, and software modelling. Previous research projects have included the derivation and validation of use case guidelines; the use of process technology to produce enactable use case tools (EDUCATOR) and (with colleagues at National ICT Australia) the production and validation of methods to align Business Strategy with IT. He was Principal Investigator on the EC funded framework 6 project VIDE (total value 2.3 Million euros), rated very good, (review Feb 2009), where Bournemouth led work to produce accessible models and interface, so that non-technical users could understand and be involved in requirements and specification of software, as part of a model driven development process.
Dr Phalp currently leads research, funded by Bosch, to enhance object-oriented models within automotive software engineering, leads work to model processes for Dorset Police, and is working on two Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects, one in methods for rich internet development and the other in software re-engineering.
Short profile
Dr Phalp originally read for a first degree in Mathematics (graduated 1986), which he then taught for a few years, before completing a Masters in Software Engineering (1992). His Masters project was industrially based, and introduced a measurement programme within a software development organisation. This was followed (92-95) by a PhD in Software Process Modelling (again involving industrial collaboration), where he invented and used a novel modelling approach to describe projects, using this as part of a case study to show the impact of effort spent in requirements activities. Dr Phalp spent three years as a post-doctoral Research Fellow, on the PROCESS project (1994-97), at the University of Southampton, which was the first major research project to map business process models to IT (see 1 & 2). Dr Phalp’s particular contribution was to highlight the importance of the audience for models, and to show how ‘families of models’ could provide user-facing descriptions, improving both validation and process analysis.
In 1997, Dr Phalp returned to take up a lectureship at Bournemouth, and became course leader for the Masters in Software Engineering. He has remained there (Bournemouth) ever since, in various roles, becoming Senior Lecturer, Reader, and now Head of Academic Group.
Throughout this time he has remained an active researcher, publishing widely,
and being entered in successive Research Assessment Exercises (2001 and then
2008). His expertise is recognised within the software research community, and
he has served on the programme committees for a number of international conferences
with a focus on process or requirements issues. Under his leadership, Computing
at Bournemouth has been re-vitalised, with radical changes in curriculum delivery,
increasing student numbers and depending on what tables one uses, a rise of
between 17 & 21 places in our position from 2001 to 2008 in the Research
Assessment Exercises.
