Rick Kazman

Timeline

1. 1990s

   Creating the SAAM method

   He helps create the Software Architecture Analysis Method, SAAM, the first documented method for analyzing software architectures. SAAM is developed in the mid 1990s to analyze a system for modifiability.

2. August 2000

   Publishing the ATAM report

   In August 2000, he publishes the report ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation with Mark Klein and Paul Clements at the Software Engineering Institute. It presents the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM), a technique for analyzing software architectures.

3. 2001–2006

   Evaluating Software Architectures

   In 2001, he coauthors Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies with Paul Clements and Mark Klein, published by Addison-Wesley. In 2006, he joins the author team of the SEI study report Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future, the product of a 12-month study of ultra-large-scale systems software.

4. By 2008

   Professor at the University of Hawaii

   By 2008, he is a professor in the Department of Information Technology Management at the University of Hawaii and a visiting scientist, and former senior member of the technical staff, at Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute. He holds a B.A. in English and music and an M.Math in computer science from the University of Waterloo, an M.A. in English from York University, and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University.

5. 2021

   Software Architecture in Practice, 4th edition

   In 2021, he and Len Bass and Paul Clements publish the fourth edition of Software Architecture in Practice with Addison-Wesley. The edition adds eleven new chapters and covers architecting for mobility, the cloud, machine learning and quantum computing, along with managing architecture debt.

6. 2025–2026

   LLMs as design assistants

   In October 2025, he is the speaker for an IEEE North Saskatchewan Section talk, "Do We Still Need Architects in the Age of AI?", which presents two empirical studies on how LLMs can assist the design process and concludes that human architects can use LLMs for divergent thinking, design options and documentation. His 2026 list includes the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering paper "Better Together: An LLM-assisted approach to designing software architectures using Attribute-Driven Design" with Humberto Cervantes and Yuanfang Cai, and the forthcoming Addison-Wesley book Software Design in the Age of AI with Cai.

7. 2026

   Elevated to IEEE Fellow

   In 2026, the IEEE Hawaii Section congratulates him on his elevation to IEEE Fellow, a grade it describes as one of the highest honors the Institute bestows.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor and ICSE 2028 chair

   He is the Danny and Elsa Lui Distinguished Professor of Information Technology Management at the University of Hawaii and a member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors. His research centers on software architecture, design and analysis tools and technical debt, along with the uses of AI in them, and he is general chair of ICSE 2028, the 50th International Conference on Software Engineering, in Hawaii.