Ivar the Great!

Today i had the great pleasure of listening to Ivar Jacobson, one of the most influential characters in the world of Software Engineering. He is the author of many books, some of which I have read and some which I still refer to.

In 1967, when I was one year old (!), Ivar proposed the concept of 'software components' for developing telephony switches for Ericsson... Over the years he has been refining and promoting component-based software development as well as methodologies around desing, construction and testing as well as the promotion and and refinement of some of the main methodologies out there, eg RUP.

My current employer brought him in to give us a 'teaser' kind of talk on his latest brain child, the Essential Unified Process. The concept is great and, really, very common sense - which is why he conceived it and so many of us missed it!... Here's 8 fundamental practice elements. Take the ones you think are relevant or even appealing to you and decide to what extent you wish to use them. As you get better or depending on the size or nature of your next piece of work, adopt some more of those 8 practices.

It is not as heavy and regimented as the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and not as scary as eXtreme Programming, although it does have elements of Agile and XP and Scrum in it. Architecture and Project Management are still there but not as heavy and useless as they often are.

The best thing though was his style and delivery. He's a very down to earth guy, no rocket scientist (although a lot more intelligent than most of us!) and he's very interactive. He apologised for the structure of today's session as there was not much chance for Q&A, which is his preferred style. He is dead pan, funny and challenging at the same time. He has that Scandinavian coolness and slight sarcasm in his delivery. Overall he's very engaging and fun to listen to.

If you have the chance to attend one of his speeches, don't miss it!