Elliot J. Chikofsky


    Elliot Chikofsky was promoted to EM&I Fellow in December 2008 at Engineering, Management & Integration (EM&I), headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. With EM&I since 2001, Mr. Chikofsky is the first person promoted to this top-most technical position title in the 18-year history of the company.  He assists and coaches government agencies, commercial enterprises, and non-profit organizations on information technology (IT) and business management, particularly in areas of IT Portfolio Management, enterprise architecture, IT investments, and systems reengineering.  He resides in Burlington, Massachusetts.
     
    Chikofsky teaches commercial IT Portfolio Management seminars as a faculty member of Intervista Institute. He is also on the faculty of University of Phoenix's Massachusetts campus in information technology and business management, as well as being adjunct faculty for Northeastern University (Boston) in engineering technology. His teaching for Northeastern University's Graduate School of Engineering since 1987 in information systems and software engineering included courses televised on the National Technological University (NTU) and Network Northeastern distribution networks.
     
    Prior to joining EM&I, he was a director in META Group's enterprise architecture and technology strategies consulting practice and in its performance engineering and measurement strategies service. At DMR Consulting Group (consulting services division of Amdahl Corporation and Fujitsu), he was associate director, specializing in business reengineering, information technology, and software architecture and reengineering for clients that included the U.S. Air Force and the FAA.
     
    Chikofsky is Vice Chair for Conferences (2009+) on the international executive committee of the IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE) and was TCSE Chair (1993-1996) and Executive Secretary (2000-2005).   In 2000, he awarded the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award "for outstanding and unparalleled service in founding five Software Engineering conferences, establishing TCSE, initiating new programs, reactivating others, and mentoring volunteers", as well as receiving the IEEE Third Millennium Medal.   He has been a member of the IEEE-CS Board of Governors (1993-1998), chair of the selection committee for the IEEE Computer Entrepreneur Award (1994-2000), and chair of the IEEE Task Force on Information Technology for Business Applications (1997-2000).
     
    Chikofsky has been the director of research and technology at Index Technology Corporation (maker of the Excelerator CASE products), and a development director at Progress Software (4GL).   He was co-founder and vice president (chief operating officer) of an early 1980s CASE spin-off from the University of Michigan. At Michigan, he was a lead developer on the mainframe CASE and Repository tool set PSL/PSA and led its commercialization as an IBM Program Offering.   He has also been an independent consultant and proprietor of Radius Systems Inc. (PathBridge®).
     
    Chikofsky chairs the Reengineering Forum industry association (REF) and founded the juried research Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE).   He is co-author of the frequently-cited 1990 taxonomy on reverse engineering and reengineering (Chikofsky & Cross, IEEE Software, January 1990).   In 1997-98, he directed the Reverse Engineering Demonstration Project, an international cooperative study among commercial and non-commercial research groups and product organizations.
     
    Chikofsky has also served as executive secretary of the IWCASE industry association (International Workshop on CASE) and chair of the award selection committee for the annual Stevens Lecture on Software Development Methods.   He was associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Software magazine through May 1992, and was founding editor of its software management column.
     
    He is described in the Encyclopedia of Software Engineering (Wiley, 1994) as "a developer, organizer, and evangelist of software engineering automation, and is most known for his advocacy of reverse engineering and CASE technologies.   He is a consultant on management issues regarding the application of software technology to solving business problems, as well as on information systems development methods, tools, and design techniques."   He is also profiled in Chapter 5 of Ivars Peterson's book Fatal Defect: Chasing Killer Computer Bugs (Times Books, 1995), describing Chikofsky's work on reverse engineering and the year 2000 computing date crisis.  
     
    In 2002, he received the Martin Essigmann Outstanding Teaching Award from Northeastern University's College of Engineering. He received NTU's Outstanding Instructor Award in each of 2000, 2001, and 2002.
     
    Chikofsky was an elected Town Meeting Member (10 years) and an elected Library Trustee in the Burlington, Massachusetts town government.   He is a senior member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) and a member of ACM.   He is also currently Master of a Masonic Lodge, Master of a regional Lodge of Instruction, and is a senior member of the Committee on Masonic Education of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts. He received an M.S. in industrial and operations engineering and a B.S. in computer and communications science, both from the University of Michigan.
     


     
    Selected Bibliography
     


     
    Elliot Chikofsky
    P.O. Box 400
    Burlington, MA 01803 USA
     
    tel +1 781-272-0049
     
    e.chikofsky@computer.org
    Elliot.Chikofsky@em-i.com
    chikofsky@email.phoenix.edu
    chikofsky@neu.edu
     
    10 January 2010
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Copyright © 2010 Elliot Chikofsky
    All rights reserved.