A&D 2007: ESSWork (Ivan Jacobson)

I just got back from Chicago where I attended Dr. Dobb's Architecture & Design World. The event was great. It had many interesting talks and sessions which I'll blog about in upcoming posts. (I'll also upload the slides from my sessions later this week.) One session I was really looking forward to was Ivar Jacobson's Keynote on "Next Generation Process with Essential Modeling".

Ivar, you recall, is one of the "Three Amigos" and a father of Use cases. I had the chance to attend a couple of his presentations several years ago and he had a very interesting and convincing appearances. But alas, this session was nothing like those previous events.

Ivar talked about his new methodology. The basic idea behind the essential software process is (in my opinion) correct. That is, instead of big bang prescribed processes, it is better to tailor a process from a set of practices to get something that fits the organization/project at hand. It might be a little unnerving to hear this from one of the people who brought us the RUP, but I guess it is good to see people who are constantly learning.

The problem was that while the main idea can be summed up in one line, Ivar went on to explain how cool it was that his base set of practices comes on a set of que cards that can be sorted and arranged. He also went on to explain the game board (or something to that effect) where you can lay different cards to both describe your current process as well as the bunch of practices you want to use for your future process.

If that wasn't enough, when he (briefly) showed us the cards that describe the architecture and architecture description practices, the advice/guidance there was very general. Frankly, I expected much more from someone of the stature of Ivar Jacobson.

On the upside this was only one keynote and the other sessions I listened to where great. Again I'll blog about few of them in upcoming posts. You can find out more about Ivar's Essential Unified Processhere.

Posted by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz at 05:01 PM  Permalink