Ivar Hjalmar Jacobson (; born September 2, 1939) is a Swedish

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

, known as a major contributor to UML, Objectory,

Rational Unified Process The rational unified process (RUP) is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003. RUP is not a single concrete prescriptive process, but rather an adaptable proc ...

(RUP), aspect-oriented software development, and Essence.

Biography

Ivar Jacobson was born in Ystad, on September 2, 1939. He received his Master of

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

degree at Chalmers Institute of Technology in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

in 1962. After his work at Ericsson, he formalized the language and method he had been working on in his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

at the Royal Institute of Technology in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

in 1985 on the thesis "Language Constructs for Large Real Time Systems". After his master's degree, Jacobson joined Ericsson and worked in R&D on computerized switching systems AKE and

AXE An axe (; sometimes spelled ax in American English; American and British English spelling differences#Miscellaneous spelling differences, see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for thousands of years to shape, split, a ...

including PLEX. In April 1987, he started Objective Systems. A majority stake of the company was acquired by Ericsson in 1991, and the company was renamed Objectory AB. Jacobson developed the software method Object-Oriented Software Engineering (OOSE) published 1992, which was a simplified version of the commercial software process Objectory (short for Object Factory). In October, 1995, Ericsson divested Objectory to Rational Software, and Jacobson started working with Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh. When

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

bought Rational in 2003, Jacobson decided to leave. He formed Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) in mid-2004, which operates with offices in the UK and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. IJI has developed several products providing use cases for Essence, the latest being Essence WorkBench. In 2000, with Agneta Jacobson, he founded Jaczone AB which developed a tool, Waypointer, to support RUP using intelligent agent techniques. Waypointer received a JOLT award in 2004. Ivar Jacobson was rewarded the Gustaf Dalén medal from Chalmers University in 2003, and received an honorary doctorate at San Martin de Porres University, Peru, in 2009.

Work

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 component A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. Value Components allow software development to assemble software ...

s in the new generation of

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

controlled

telephone switch A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a central component of a telecommunications system in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It facilitates the establishment of communication circuits ...

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

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 case In both software and systems engineering, a use case is a structured description of a system’s behavior as it responds to requests from external actors, aiming to achieve a specific goal. It is used to define and validate functional requireme ...

s 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

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 Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to software development, developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by ''The Agile Alliance'', a group of 17 software practitioners, in 2001. As documented ...

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 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Visual Studio Team System and

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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 Bertrand Meyer (; ; born 21 November 1950) is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language and the concept of design by contract. Education and academic career 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 pratices.

Publications

Jacobson has published numerous 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, * 1994. ''The Object Advantage: Business Process Reengineering With Object Technology (ACM Press)''. With M. Ericsson & A. Jacobson. Addison-Wesley, * 1997. ''Software Reuse: Architecture, Process, and Organization for Business Success (ACM Press)''. With Martin Griss & Patrik Jonsson. Addison-Wesley, 1997, * 1998. ''The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual''. With Grady Booch & James Rumbaugh. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004, * 1998. ''The Unified Modeling Language User Guide''. With Grady Booch & James Rumbaugh. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, * 1999. ''The Unified Software Development Process''. With Grady Booch & James Rumbaugh. Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999, * 2000. ''The Road to the Unified Software Development Process''. With Stefan Bylund. Cambridge University Press, 1999, * 2004. ''Aspect-Oriented Software Development With Use Cases (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)''. With Pan-Wei Ng. Addison-Wesley, * 2013. ''The Essence of Software Engineering - Applying the SEMAT Kernel''. With Pan-Wei Ng, Paul Mc Mahon, Ian Spence, and Svante Lidman. Addison-Wesley, 2013, ISBN * 2015. ''Software Engineering in the Systems Context''. With Bud Lawson. College Publications, 2015, * 2019. ''The Essentials of Modern Software Engineering - Free the Practices from the Method prisons''. With Harold "Bud" Lawson, Pan-Wei Ng, Paul Mc Mahon, and Michael Goedicke. ACM Books & Morgan & Claypool publishers, 2019,

References

External links

Ivar Jacobson International

Ivar Jacobson's Blog

EssWork Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobson, Ivar 1939 births Living people KTH Royal Institute of Technology alumni Software engineers Swedish computer scientists Unified Modeling Language Ericsson people Chalmers University of Technology alumni 20th-century Swedish inventors People from Ystad 21st-century Swedish inventors