ijacobson的专栏

What Drives Me

ijacobson — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:07:00 +0800

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it!“ (Alan Kay)

A few days ago, a very simple but thought provoking question was raised to me: “what it is that drives me?” The simple truth is that I do not know. But I do know what it is that does not drive me. It is not about money. Actually, never has it been about money. Neither is it about power. I am happy to step aside and I am happy to delegate both up and down. It is not about popularity – but I do li

Two complementary macro-trends in software engineering

ijacobson — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:20:00 +0800

April 30th, 2010 From my horizon, I see two distinct and yet complementary macro-trends driving the way we become better at developing software. One could be called “Methods & Tools” the other could be called “Professionalism & Craftsmanship”. These two trends are not new, they have been around as long as we have built software. Both are based on the fact that it is people who develop programs, rather than methods and tools. But they take different approaches to the problem by focusing on dif

Model Storming

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:29:00 +0800

March 28th, 2010

Last week, I attended a workshop of a new initiative in software engineering (SEMAT see www.semat.org). This was the first real f2f meeting we've had. 28 people attended the workshop and one session with around 12 people were working on developing more detailed objectives of the entire initiative.

To develop the objectives we appointed a facilitator. He suggested that we make a usage model for the Semat initiative. But for this

How to stop thinking about business as “the customer” and IT as “the vendor”

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:26:00 +0800

March 23rd, 2010

In my last three blogs, I discussed how we can close the gap between the business and IT. I summed up the way forward with the advice to stop thinking about the business as the customer and IT as the provider. Instead, let them work together in teams (similar to members of a soccer team), responsible directly to management.

It will not be an easy journey, but here are some steps along the way:
Management needs to:Make IT an

How do we get business and IT to play on the same team?

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:24:00 +0800

February 8th, 2010

To close the gap between business and IT we need to get them to play on the same team, as said in my two previous blogs. I compared this team with a soccer team in which the participants are not just specialists but also generalists – they can all kick the ball when called upon.

The Business-IT “team” should work in a similar way. Despite having specialized roles, all of the participants should contribute to achieve a comm

Let the Business and IT play on the same team

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:21:00 +0800

December 19th, 2009

In an earlier blog (Nov 2009: Closing the Gap between Business and IT) I described the gap between business and IT and suggested a way forward: we must speak the same language. That language must be more than just a spoken language; some simple drawings or models are often useful. However, beware of business models inspired by software models, which assume an underlying abstract computational machine. We must work together pursuing common

SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory): A Call for Action

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:18:00 +0800

December 18th, 2009

We are some people who have observed software engineering theory and practice of the past decades and have realized that it is now time to revitalize this discipline. We have been quietly planning a “revolution”.

For those who have been following my columns may know that, for a very long time, I have been talking about that we need a theory of software engineering. See my two blog entries, “A problem to fix: We don’t understan

Closing the Gap between Business and IT

ijacobson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:05:00 +0800

From almost the dawn of the age of software more than 50 years ago, there has been a communication gap between business and IT. For almost as long we have sought solutions, but they always seem to elude us. Meanwhile, the gap has grown into a chasm that now needs a fairly substantial bridge. From the business you may hear that ”we have no confidence in IT’s ability to deliver useful solutions”, or “we have limited visibility of progress, risks and problems”

There are practices and then there are Practices

ijacobson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:18:00 +0800

November 10, 2009

The software development community has been talking about practices in an informal way for a very long time – more than 50 years. In the way the community talks, a “practice” is just something that people do, a habit they have that may be good, or perhaps not good. Talking about practices in this way makes for good conversation, but it is hard to figure out how to combine good practices into something meaningful.

I like to talk

Taking the temperature of UML

ijacobson — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:16:00 +0800

【征集志愿者翻译Ivar Jacobson的文章，感兴趣的朋友可以邮件联系】

More than twelve years have passed since UML, the Unified Modeling Language, became a standard. During these years the perception of UML has ranged from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the earth.
At the beginning of the 1990s there were 26 published methods on object-orientation, most methods with its own notation. It was to address at least the notation problem that UML was conceived. As most of you probably know, Grady B