Heather L. Oppenheimer, Senior Partner of Oppenheimer Partners, LLC, is an SEI-Authorized Instructor for Introduction to CMMI®, SCAMPI ^SM Lead Appraiser, SCAMPI B/C Observer and serves as a Resident Affiliate of the Software Engineering Institute. Heather has more than 15 years of experience in leading successful quality and process improvement initiatives, training and assessments, as well as more than 20 years of experience in all areas of software and systems engineering in globally distributed organizations. She is highly skilled in obtaining diverse, seemingly unrelated data, seeing the overall patterns, and synthesizing into an easily understandable “big picture”, then presenting the information in a clearly understandable way. She has outstanding technical and consultative ability, particularly in the areas of project and risk management, requirements management, software architecture, and test strategy. She focuses on simplifying work to increase efficiency and provides insight into the strategic implications of solutions. 

Heather has developed and delivered internal CMMI training throughout Lucent and delivered 9 sessions of the SEI-authorized Introduction to CMMI in North America, Europe, and Asia .  In addition, she has developed and taught courses and workshops related to other standards and methodologies including ISO 9000, ISO 9001/2000, TL 9000, and Agile-related methodologies such as use case techniques, UML (as used by Rational), Test-Driven-Development and other Extreme Programming techniques. She has also developed, adapted and deployed organizational processes designed to meet these standards and methodologies appropriately for the organizational context.   She is currently developing an intermediate level CMMI course for the SEI, focusing on helping practitioners with an implementation strategy or approach to applying the practices of levels 2 and 3.

She has led over 40 process and project management reviews as well as systems architecture reviews, including leading, planning and/or participating in 11 SCAMPI appraisals  in Europe, Asia, and North America for organizations ranging in size from fewer than 100 to more than 2000 staff.

She has co-chaired ICSE global software development workshops, reviews software engineering journals, and referees grant proposals for the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. She is an invited presenter and leads workshops at international conferences including ICSE, SEI SEPG, and SIGGRAPH.

Previously, as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Lucent Technologies’ global quality office, she led a corporate-wide global CMMI initiative, successfully implementing CMMI in six key business units.  Before joining Lucent/Bell Laboratories, she was a facilitator, teacher, and consultant, helping teams identify and prioritize needs, define solutions, and make changes.

Ms. Oppenheimer earned her Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, her Master of Education in Curriculum Design at the University of Oregon , and her Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College in Ohio .