Curtis has been tremendously influential in the software process improvement field, and this Curtis paper was his most highly cited: Google Scholar lists 763 papers which cite it. Of those papers which cite this one, more than fifty of them have been cited more than 50 times, themselves. Of his other papers, 11 that I can find have been cited more than 50 times and six more than 150 times (again according to Google Scholar). Those papers were all written between 1979 and 1995, in the golden years of software methodology resarch.

Other parts of Curtis' work is familiar to us, even if we didn't know he was involved. He is a former director of the Software Process Program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, the creators of CMM and CMMI. He co-authored the Capability Maturity Model for Software, and was the chief architect of the People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM). PCMM reminds me a lot of a practitioner's approach to achieving a learning organziation.

PCMM reflects what he learned in this paper (as far as I can tell from the summaries I've found):

• The People CMM systematically infuses the required competencies, leading to empowerment. At level 3, the manager begins to trust the process and steps a little back. At level 4, the manager takes advantage of the frame-work installed till level 3, and steps further back. At level 5, interactions of workgroups with those in other units are aligned. Performance is aligned to optimize the system. The model helps systematically manage performance. “The issue is not evaluating individuals. But to bring in continuing discussion of how work is performed.” [1]

Currently, he a founding partner of Capability Measurement (couldn't find anything out about this company) and was until recently the chief process officer of Borland Software Corporation (he remains their chief process advisor). He was the cofounder and chief scientist of TeraQuest Metrics, Inc (acquired in 2005 by Borland), which helped large companies manage and take control of their software development processes [2].