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The Three Amigos

At OOPSLA'95 Paul Levy, the president of Rational announced that the company had acquired my company Objectory and that I would work for Rational. I was surprised how excited people were about these news. By having all three of us in the same company, the audience felt that the war on methods would eventually be over. Well, I never believed we would go that far. The war on modeling languages would be over but the war on methods would probably continue another decade or so.

Rational invited people to an evening with Grady, Jim and myself. More than 300 people came paying $50 each for the dinner. During this dinner the Three Amigos concept was coined. And we heard a very funny song by Jim. Jim is not a great singer but his performance was outstanding. People laughed so they got tears in their eyes.

Jim Rumbaugh's Song at OOPSLA'95

Unified Method Song
"Both Sides Now"
by Jim Rumbaugh
with apologies to Joni Mitchell
 
Blobs with writing in their hair
And small adornments in the air
And has-relations everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way.
 
But now I've purged them from my Sun
Eliminated every one
So many things I would have done
To drive the clouds away.
 
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
Both in and out, and still somehow
It's clouds' delusions I appall
I really can't stand clouds at all.
 
Balls for multiplicity
Black and white for clarity
And data flows arranged in trees
Were part of OMT.
 
But now I've had to let them go
We'll do it differently, you know
'Cause Grady said, they've got to go
We can't use OMT.
 
I've seen OMT from both sides now
Both good and bad, and still somehow
It's my notation I recall
I really like OMT best of all.
 
Talks in June to write it down
And document just what we've found
And bring it here to Austin town
To give it all away.
 
But now our fans are acting strange
Hey, Jim and Grady, you've both changed.
Well, something's lost, but something's gained
In building unity.
 
We've seen OO from both sides now
Both his and mine, and still somehow
It's OO's strengths we'll still pursue
We've tried to bring the best to you.

My Speech at OOPSLA'96

At OOPSLA'96 we announced our work on UML at a bird's of a feather session. Several hundred people attended and I gave a speech joking about our work.

Hello everyone!

Do you know which is the the most common question I am asked nowadays?  In public as well as privately.  Particularly from journalists. It is: “How can you and Grady Booch and Jim Rumbaugh get something done together?”  Every time I get the question I become very surprised, raise my eyebrowns and look like a question mark. Who do people think we are? I have asked some other friends why they think we get this question.  One friend answered by saying: “Don’t you know the difference between a methodologist and a terrorist?  Well, with a terrorist you can negotiate!” Thus I will be happy to answer that question now.

We started to work together all three of us exactly a year ago at OOPSLA. My company Objectory and Rational got “married” at that time.  As a consequence you could say that …… <thinking> no, you can’t say that…
We had a rather long honeymoon, during which time we tried different … <thinking> “positions” on one another.  We understood quickly that there was only one way that we would be able to succeed.  We needed to develop a systematic way to work together …   We needed of course a method.  We called it MUMBLE which stands for Method for Unification of Modeling B… Language Etc.  The B is a word that none of us would ever take in his mouth.
Obviously a method like MUMBLE isn’t something that you can come up with in a blink so we are currently working to finalize the MUMBLE method in order to be able to define the UML method.
Did you get that?

I believe that we today have come up with something like an 80% solution for MUMBLE, which means that we have 80% of the work left. But that does not matter since we are almost ready.
But listen now - to be able to really get at the core of the method, Grady, Jim and I each have decided to write a book together on MUMBLE!
I strongly recommend that you read this book so you’ll be prepared for the three books we’ll soon be releasing on the subject of UML.

The first step in MUMBLE is of course where we identify all the use cases of UML.  This is a very iterative phase. We move through a number of states – starting with a “confusion” state, passing a number of “chaos” state, coming to a “believe we have concensus” state, where we iterate until we incrementally have got to a “put on paper” state reaching the “concensus” state, which BTW is a very volatile state.
Let me give you a concrete pattern of interaction:

One morning when I woke up after having had a nice evening being at a number of jazz-clubs having had a beer -- or ten -- with a terrible headache.  I met Grady and Jim or <thinking> maybe it was Jim and Grady and we created an interaction instance, where we all FIVE were participating objects.
I said: Let me propose that we get rid of those use cases.  <pause> I have never really understood them anyhow …
Then Jim rose to his feet.  BTW before starting to work with Jim people told me that he was a --- <thinking> he was a square.  But that is not at all true, that is false.  He is more of a --- more of a rectangle. 
Jim said:  Nonononono, which actually means YES.  Let us simplify UML by removing the use cases.
Grady said: “No, if you think of it, the only thing we need to do when developing software is to give the users the use cases they need.”
“I will put a stake in the ground.  I will go as far as saying that the only thing we really need are use cases -- even if they are not everything.”
Grady now became passionated.  As you all know Grady has always has his head in the “clouds”, <thinking> no I mean “clouds” in his head, <thinking> no I mean… Anyway he went on: “And you know we have an excellent notation for use cases.  As Ivar suggested he has never really understood use cases, so I suggest that we draw use cases as clouds.”
This was too much for Jim so he said: “No way.  Remember what happened last year at OOPSLA.  I sang a song how I got rid of the clouds, and everyone loved it. Don’t bring up the clouds again!”
As you all understand we had now come to a sequence of chaotic states.  The rest is less interesting.  What became the concensus.  Of course we got concensus.  Everyone won. 

  • I got use cases, which I now must admit I was wrong that morning. 
  • Jim got rid of the clouds, and
  • Grady got ellipses, which are nothing but smoothed clouds for use cases.

This is the way we work together and deep in our hearts we can say that we get a language which is better than anyone of us could have come up with on his own.
Conclusion


So now you all know how Jim and Grady and I work together. It’s all so simple - all you need is a method!
Now let me finish by saying that I would be very happy if you would reveal to everyone you know how we actually work together. 

Because as you understand we truly are THE THREE AMIGOS.

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