Software Engineering Institute

Anita Carleton is an Executive Leadership Team Member and Division Director (acting) of the Software Solutions Division at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University, where she has more than 30 years of technical and senior leadership experience in the software engineering industry. She provides leadership for the research, development, and transition of methods and technologies that encapsulate best practices for software engineering, management, and measurement for national defense.

The SEI is the only federally funded research and development center specifically established to solve the most significant Department of Defense (DoD) challenges in software, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. As Division Director of the SEI’s Software Solutions Division, she has leadership and operating responsibility for 160 people and approximately $55M and leads the division’s research and development portfolio and its work with government, industry, and academia to develop and adapt software technologies, software analyses, and data analytics for the measurable benefit of the U.S. Government. She also leads strategy development and execution for the division which is focused on applying new software technologies to gain leap-ahead mission capabilities for DoD and other government organizations. The ubiquity and critical role of software require fundamental shifts in software engineering to maintain DoD’s competitive advantage motivating Carleton’s leadership and development of SEI’s software strategy.

In her previous position as Director of the SEI Software Engineering Process Management Program, she managed the SEI's software development and measurement initiatives, which included Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Team Software Process (TSP), methods designed to yield high quality software and high performance teams. These models and measurement practices have been used throughout the software industry worldwide. In 2012, she provided technical leadership for the successful spinout of the CMMI product suite to the CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of Carnegie Innovations, Carnegie Mellon University’s technology commercialization enterprise. Her seminal research in applying statistical process control techniques to the U.S. Space Shuttle software data led to Carleton’s co-authored book Measuring the Software Process: Statistical Process Control for Software Process Improvement published by Addison Wesley.

Before joining the SEI, Carleton held technical and management positions in industry. At GTE Government Systems in Massachusetts, she designed, developed, and tested software for the Minuteman and Peacekeeper Missile Systems. At the Goodyear Tech Center in Ohio, she was the lead systems modeling and simulation engineer responsible for conducting tire tread studies utilizing experimental design and statistical analysis techniques.

Carleton received her bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University and her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She serves on the IEEE Software Board and is a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society. She has received achievement awards for her work in support of Air Force programs, from the Journal of the Quality Assurance Institute for her leadership in software measurement, and from Dr. Barry Boehm, Director of Defense Research & Engineering (DDR&E), for her leadership in defining a core set of measures and measurement definition frameworks for collecting well-understood and consistent software data throughout the DoD. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Dance Council.