Ivar Jacobson

Ivar Hjalmar Jacobson (; 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.

Biography Ivar Jacobson was born in Ystad, on September 2, 1939. He received his Master of Electrical Engineering degree at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg in 1962. After his work at Ericsson, he formalized the language and method he had been working on in his PhD at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 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 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 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. 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. 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.

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,