Constantine specializes in the human side of
software development. His published work includes the influential classic text,
Structured Design, written with
Ed Yourdon, and the award-winning "Software for Use", written with Lucy Lockwood. His contributions to the practice of software development began in 1968 with his pioneering work in "
Modular programming" concepts. Constantine was the primary force behind the discipline of
Structured Design, in his book of the same name. The key features of Structured Design, such as
Structure Chart, the
Data flow diagram are all commonly used and taught worldwide.
Structured design Constantine, who learned programming at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began his professional career in computers with a summer job at Scientific Computing, at the time a subsidiary of
Control Data Corporation, in Minneapolis. He went on to full-time work at MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science, where he wrote routines for analyzing spark chamber photographs, and then to C-E-I-R, Inc., where he worked on economics simulations, business applications, project management tools, and programming languages. While still an undergraduate at MIT he began work on what was to become structured design, formed his first consulting company, and taught in a postgraduate program at the University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School. The core of structured design, including structure charts and coupling and cohesion metrics, was substantially complete by 1968, when it was presented at the National Symposium on Modular Programming. He joined the faculty of IBM’s Systems Research Institute the same year, where he taught for four years and further refined his concepts. As part of structured design, Constantine developed the concepts of
cohesion (the degree to which the internal contents of a module are related) and
coupling (the degree to which a module depends upon other modules). These two concepts have been influential in the development of software engineering, and stand alone from structured design as significant contributions in their own right. They have proved foundational in areas ranging from software design to software metrics, and indeed have passed into the vernacular of the discipline. Constantine also developed methodologies that combine human-computer-interaction design with software engineering. One methodology,
usage-centered design, is the topic of his 1999 book with Lucy Lockwood, "Software For Use". This is a third significant contribution to the field, being both well used in professional practice and the subject of academic study, and taught in a number of human-computer interface courses and universities around the world. His work on
human-computer interaction was influential for techniques like essential
use cases and
usage-centered design, which are widely used for building interactive software systems.
Family therapy Constantine trained under family therapy pioneers
David Kantor and Fred and Bunny Duhl at the Boston Family Institute, completing a two-year postgraduate certificate program in 1973. From 1973 to 1980 he was an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry in the
Tufts University School of Medicine training family therapists and supervising trainees at Boston State Hospital. He became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and later a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Massachusetts and was designated an approved supervisor by the
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. His contributions to theory and research in family therapy and human systems theory were summarized in Family Paradigms (Guilford Press, 1986), a book heralded at the time as “one of the finest theoretical books yet published in the family therapy field” and “among the most significant developments of the decade.” This work has also seen application in organization development. He and his wife at the time, Joan Constantine, also researched and practiced
group marriage in the 1970s. They created the Family Tree organization to promote healthy non-monogamous families. They collaboratively authored a book on the subject in 1974,
Group Marriage: A Study of Contemporary Multilateral Marriage (Collier Books, 1974).
Patents US Patents: 7010753 Anticipating drop acceptance indication; 7055105 Drop-enabled tabbed dialog; 8161026 Inexact date entry == Music ==