Ivar Hjalmar Jacobson is a Swedish
computer scientistA computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
, known as major contributor to UML, Objectory, RUP and aspect-oriented software development.
Biography
Ivar Jacobson was born in
YstadYstad is a "locality", or town, and the seat of Ystad Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden, with 17,286 inhabitants .Settlement dates back to the 11th century and the town has become a busy ferryport, local administrative centre and tourist attraction...
,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
on 2 September 1939. He received his Master of
Electrical EngineeringElectrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
degree at
Chalmers Institute of TechnologyChalmers University of Technology , is a Swedish university located in Gothenburg that focuses on research and education in technology, natural science and architecture.-History:...
in
GothenburgGothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
in 1962 and a
Ph.D.A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at the
Royal Institute of TechnologyThe Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...
in
StockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in 1985 on a thesis on Language Constructs for Large Real Time Systems.
After university, Jacobson worked at Ericsson until April 1987, when he started Objective Systems. A majority stake of the company was acquired by Ericsson in 1991, and the company was renamed
Objectory ABObjectory Systems was a software company based in Sweden that was instrumental in the development of Object-oriented program design. Founded in 1987 by Ivar Jacobson, the company developed ObjectOry, an object-oriented development method which was an extension of what is known as the Ericsson...
. Jacobson developed the software process OOSE at Objectory circa 1992.
In October 1995 Ericsson divested Objectory to
Rational SoftwareRational Machines was founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development...
and Jacobson started working with
Grady BoochGrady Booch is an American software engineer. Booch is best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and collaborative development environments...
and
James RumbaughJames E. Rumbaugh is an American computer scientist and object methodologist who is best known for his work in creating the Object Modeling Technique and the Unified Modeling Language .- Biography :...
, known collectively as the Three Amigos.
Rational was bought by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
in 2003 and Jacobson decided to quit, but he stayed on until May 2004 as an executive technical consultant.
In mid 2003 Jacobson formed Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) which is an umbrella company for Ivar Jacobson Consulting (IJC) which operates across 4 continents with offices in the UK, US (West and East Coast), Europe, Scandinavia, China, Korea, Singapore and Australia.
Ericsson
In 1967 at Ericsson Jacobson proposed the use of software components in the new generation of software controlled telephone switches
EricssonEricsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
was developing. In doing this he invented
sequence diagramA sequence diagram in Unified Modeling Language is a kind of interaction diagram that shows how processes operate with one another and in what order. It is a construct of a Message Sequence Chart....
s, 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 1967, SDL became a standard in the telecoms industry.
At Ericsson he also invented
use caseIn software engineering and systems engineering, a use case is a description of steps or actions between a user and a software system which leads the user towards something useful...
s as a way to specify functional software requirements.
Rational Software
At Rational, Jacobson and his friends,
Grady BoochGrady Booch is an American software engineer. Booch is best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and collaborative development environments...
and
James RumbaughJames E. Rumbaugh is an American computer scientist and object methodologist who is best known for his work in creating the Object Modeling Technique and the Unified Modeling Language .- Biography :...
, first designed the
UMLUnified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
, later developing the
Rational Unified ProcessThe Rational Unified Process is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003...
.
Essential Unified Process
In November 2005, Jacobson announced the
Essential Unified ProcessThe Essential Unified Process for software development, or EssUP, was invented by Ivar Jacobson as an improvement on the Rational Unified Process. It identifies practices, such as use cases, iterative development, architecture driven development, team practices and process practices, which are...
or “EssUP” for short. EssUP is a new “Practice” centric software development process that stands on the shoulders of modern but established software development best practice. It is a fresh new start, integrating successful practices sourced from the three leading process camps: the unified process camp, the
agile software developmentAgile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams...
camp and the
process improvementIn organizational development , process improvement is a series of actions taken by a process owner to identify, analyze and improve existing business processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to create...
camp. Each one of them contributes different capabilities: structure, agility and process improvement.
Ivar has described EssUP as a "super light and agile" RUP, and IJI have integrated EssUP into
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Visual Studio Team SystemVisual Studio Application Lifecycle Management is a collection of integrated software development tools developed by Microsoft. These tools include IDEs, source control, work items, collaboration, metrics, and reporting tools.-Platform:...
and
EclipseEclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
.
SEMAT
In November 2009, Jacobson,
Bertrand MeyerBertrand Meyer is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language.-Education and academic career:...
and
Richard SoleyDr. Richard Mark Soley is the chair and CEO of Object Management Group, Inc. ; as such, the vision and direction of the consortium are his responsibility...
("the Troika") started an initiative called
SEMATSEMAT is an initiative to reshape software engineering such that software engineering qualifies as a rigorous discipline...
(Software Engineering Method and Theory) to seek to develop a rigorous, theoretically sound basis for software engineering practice, and its wide adoption by industry and academia.
Publications
Jacobson has published several books and articles, a selection:
- 1992. Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach (ACM Press) With Magnus Christerson, Patrik Jonsson & Gunnar Overgaard. Addison-Wesley, 1992, ISBN 0-201-54435-0
- 1994. The Object Advantage: Business Process Reengineering With Object Technology (ACM Press). With M. Ericsson & A. Jacobson. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-42289-1
- 1997. Software Reuse: Architecture, Process, and Organization for Business Success (ACM Press). With Martin Griss & Patrik Jonsson. Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-92476-5
- 1999. The Unified Software Development Process. With Grady Booch
Grady Booch is an American software engineer. Booch is best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and collaborative development environments...
& James RumbaughJames E. Rumbaugh is an American computer scientist and object methodologist who is best known for his work in creating the Object Modeling Technique and the Unified Modeling Language .- Biography :...
. Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999, ISBN 0-201-57169-2
- 2004. The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual (2nd Edition). With Grady Booch
Grady Booch is an American software engineer. Booch is best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and collaborative development environments...
& James RumbaughJames E. Rumbaugh is an American computer scientist and object methodologist who is best known for his work in creating the Object Modeling Technique and the Unified Modeling Language .- Biography :...
. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004, ISBN 0-321-24562-8
- 2004. Aspect-Oriented Software Development With Use Cases (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series). With Pan-Wei Ng. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-321-26888-1
- 2005. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide (2nd Edition). With Grady Booch
Grady Booch is an American software engineer. Booch is best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software architecture, software engineering, and collaborative development environments...
& James RumbaughJames E. Rumbaugh is an American computer scientist and object methodologist who is best known for his work in creating the Object Modeling Technique and the Unified Modeling Language .- Biography :...
. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, ISBN 0-321-26797-4
External links