Photo: Alfonso Pierantonio from L'Aquila, Italy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons¹¹

Ivar Jacobson

Swedish computer scientist and software engineer

Ivar Hjalmar Jacobson (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈǐːvar ˈjɑ̂ːkɔbˌsɔn]; born September 2, 1939) is a Swedish computer scientist and software engineer, known as a major contributor to UML, Objectory, Rational Unified Process (RUP), aspect-oriented software development, and Essence.²

From Wikipedia’s article on Ivar Jacobson (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Sep 2, 1939.¹

Companies

Objectory ABFounder¹⁰

Early life and education

Date not recordedChalmers University of Technology³
Date not recordedRoyal Institute of Technology³

Career

Occupation: computer scientist, inventor.⁶

Date not recordedFounded Ivar Jacobson International⁴
Date not recordedFounded Objectory AB⁵

Summary

Dr. Ivar Jacobson's contributions span over 50 years, starting from components and architecture in 1967 and still ongoing today with Essence, which is described as "a common ground for engineering". He also created Use Cases, and co-created UML and the Rational Unified Process. His software products include Objectory and the intelligent agent tool Waypointer.

Ericsson

In 1967 at Ericsson, Jacobson proposed software components in the new generation of software controlled telephone switches Ericsson was developing. In doing this he also invented sequence diagrams, and developed collaboration diagrams. He also used state transition diagrams to describe the message flows between components.

Jacobson saw a need for blueprints for software development. He was one of the original developers of the Specification and Design Language (SDL). In 1976, SDL became a standard in the telecoms industry.

In 1986, he also invented use cases as a way to specify functional software requirements.

Rational Software

At Rational, Jacobson and his colleagues, Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh, became the original developers of UML, and his Objectory Process evolved to become the Rational Unified Process under the leadership of Philippe Kruchten.

Essential Unified Process

In November 2005, Jacobson announced the Essential Unified Process or "EssUP" for short. EssUP was a new "Practice"-centric software development process derived from established software development practices. It integrated practices sourced from three different process camps: the unified process camp, the agile software development camp, and the process improvement (primarily the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)) camp. Each one of them contributed different capabilities: structure, agility, and process improvement.

Ivar has described EssUP as a "super light and agile" RUP. IJI have integrated EssUP into Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Eclipse.

EssWork

Standing on the experience of EssUP Ivar and his team, in particular Ian Spence and Pan Wei Ng, developed EssWork starting in 2006. EssWork is a framework for working with methods. It is based on a kernel of universal elements always prevalent in software development endeavors. On top of the kernel some fifteen practices were defined. A team can create their own method by composing practices.

SEMAT and Essence

In November 2009, Jacobson, Bertrand Meyer, and Richard Soley ("the Troika") started an initiative called SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory) to seek to develop a rigorous, theoretically basis for software engineering practice, and to promote its wide adoption by industry and academia. SEMAT has been inspired by the work at IJI, but with a fresh new start. Essence, an OMG standard since November 2014, is the end result of SEMAT. Methods are created as compositions of reusable practices.