McGoveran's software engineering contributions include a collaborative conferencing system (1978); multi-tier relational CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) system (Fasttrack, 1982); relational access manager (1984–89); international electronic funds transfer (1984); trading systems databases (1986–91); OLCP requirements (1986); an object-relational portfolio management (1986–89); first Sybase SQL Server PC client (1987); client-server API requirements (1988); object-relational API requirements (1990); query optimizer requirements (1990); first middleware market analysis and forecast (1991); Database Connectivity Benchmark (1993); numerous high availability and scalable systems (1994–96); and designed BPMS products and established the BPM category (1998-2000) with HP and IBM.