Winston W. Royce
American software engineer (1929–1995)
Winston Walker Royce (August 15, 1929 – June 7, 1995) was an American computer scientist and former director at Lockheed Software Technology Center in Austin, Texas. He was a pioneer in the field of software development, known for his 1970 paper from which the Waterfall model was mistakenly drawn.
Biography
Born in 1929, Royce entered the California Institute of Technology, where he received a BS in physics and an MS in aeronautical engineering. In 1959 he received a PhD in aeronautical engineering under Julian David Cole, with the thesis "Transonic flow over a non-lifting, slender body of revolution."
Royce began his career as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, before becoming a project manager in the aerospace division of TRW in 1961. His first project concerned the design of a mission planning and orbit selection system for spacecraft. In the following years, he was involved in the research and development of several large and complex software systems, and started developing new methodologies for improving the management of software projects.
In 1970 he published the influential article "Managing the development of large software systems", in which he presented several project management models, including what we now know as the waterfall, iterative, and agile models.
In 1985, he received the AIAA Information Systems Award. During the 1980s, he was director at Lockheed Software Technology Center in Austin, Texas. He retired in 1994 and died the following year at his home in Clifton, Virginia.
“Winston W. Royce” enters the record as american software engineer (1929–1995). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Winston, Royce and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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