Adam Kolawa

Adam Kolawa
Born June 25, 1957 (1957-06-25) (age 54)
Poland
Died April 26, 2011(2011-04-26)
Occupation CEO/Co-Founder Parasoft

Adam Kazimierz Kolawa (June 25, 1957 – April 26, 2011) was CEO and co-founder of Parasoft, a software company in Monrovia, CA that makes software development tools. Recognized by eWeek as one of the 100 Most Influential People in IT, Kolawa wrote three books on software development and published hundreds of articles in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, SD Times, and Dr. Dobb's Journal.

Contents

History

Kolawa received a M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology in 1981 and a M.Sc. in Physics from Jagiellonian University in 1982.[1] After Kolawa emigrated from Poland to the United States, he earned a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from the California Institute of Technology. While at Caltech, he worked with Geoffrey Fox and helped design and implement the Intel hypercube parallel computer known as the Cosmic Cube.[2][3]

In 1987, he founded Parasoft with four friends from Caltech.[1] Initially, the company focused on parallel processing technologies.[4] Kolawa transitioned the company from a parallel processing system producer, to a software development tool producer, to a provider of software solutions and services that help organizations deliver better business applications faster by establishing quality as a continuous process throughout the software development life cycle.[5]

Kolawa's latest major publication is The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know About Information Technology (John Wiley & Sons, January 2009).[6] This book discusses how two "quantum leaps" can occur when IT is properly understood and properly managed. The first quantum leap describes the radical improvement in the productivity of individual programmers and programmer teams when they build software the proper way. The second quantum leap describes a radical improvement in the productivity of the entire enterprise that can arise, with proper executive action, after the first leap has occurred.

Previously, Kolawa co-authored two books on software development and written or contributed to articles in publications such as the Wall Street Journal,[7] Forbes,[8] CIO,[9][10][11] ComputerWorld,[12] and Dr. Dobb's Journal.[13] In 2007, eWeek recognized Kolawa as one of the 100 Most Influential People in IT.[14] In 2001, Kolawa was awarded the Los Angeles Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Software category.[15]

Kolawa was granted 20 patents for software technologies he has invented. His patents include runtime memory error detection technology (Patent 5,842,019 and 5,581,696 - granted in 1998), statically analyzing source code quality using rules (Patent 5,860,011 - granted in 1999), and automated unit test case generation technology (Patent 5,761,408 and 5,784,553 - granted in 1998).[16]

Kolawa died suddenly on April 26, 2011.[17]

Publications

Books

Selected Articles

References

  1. ^ a b "Interview: Adam Kolawa, Parasoft" in socaltech.com, February 9, 2004
  2. ^ "The Implementation of a Dynamic Load Balancer." Kolawa, A. with G. Fox and R. Williams. In Hypercube Multiprocessors, M. T. Heath, editor. SIAM, Philadelphia, 114-121. 1987. Caltech Report C3P-328
  3. ^ "Performance of' the Mark II and INTEL Hypercubes." Kolawa, A. with S. Otto, published in Hypercube Multiprocessors, edited by T. Heath, SIAM, 272. 1986. Caltech report C3P-254
  4. ^ "Express"
  5. ^ "Parasoft's Adam Kolawa: Software quality is a continuous process" SearchSoftwareQuality.com, November 28, 2007
  6. ^ "The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology" at www.wiley.com
  7. ^ Kolawa, A., " Outsourcing Is Not the Enemy", Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2004
  8. ^ "Rethinking Software" by Ed Sperling, Forbes, July 27, 2009
  9. ^ "How to Fix The Productivity Problem That's Killing the Software Industry" by Adam Kolawa, CIO, March 5, 2009
  10. ^ "How Better Software Can Save the World" by Adam Kolawa, CIO, October 10, 2008
  11. ^ "Developing Bug-Free Software" by Adam Kolawa, CIO, August 15, 2002
  12. ^ "Why Aren't We Doing More to Prevent Errors?" by Adam Kolawa, Computerworld, August 6, 2003
  13. ^ "Communicating With Software-Development Managers" by Adam Kolawa, Dr. Dobb's Journal, February 1, 2004
  14. ^ "Top 100 Most Influential People in IT" in eWeek
  15. ^ "Entrepreneur of the Year" Los Angeles Business Journal June 18, 2001
  16. ^ Patent search for Kolawa, Adam at www.uspto.gov
  17. ^ "Remembering Adam Kolawa From Parasoft" by Alan Zeichick, SD Times, May 2, 2011

External links