Resources

While many organizations have turned to agile as a way to streamline their development processes, the road to successfully implementing agile is bumpy. For organizations who want to achieve and maintain a sustainable agile transformation long-term, Ivar Jacobson, founder and chairman of Ivar Jacobson International, and Ian Spence, head of research and development at Ivar Jacobson International, shed some light on how to do that.

Use-Case 2.0 re-focuses on the essentials and offers a slimmed down, leaner way of working, for software teams seeking the benefits of iterative, incremental development at an enterprise level.

Use-Case 2.0 re-focuses on the essentials and offers a slimmed down, leaner way of working, for software teams seeking the benefits of iterative, incremental development at an enterprise level

Combining agile and SEMAT yields more advantages than either one alone. This paper discusses how two current popular movements complement one another to provide a powerful basis for software development.

In the same way that Google map shows you where you are, where you want to go, and the best way to get there when making a journey, SEMAT and Essence can do the same for teams of engineers developing software.

Ben LInders interviews Ivar Jacobson and Ian Spence on the use of SEMAT within agile adoption. Published on InfoQ.

Roly Stimson, Principal Consultant with Ivar Jacobson International, has been blogging on the topic of a software practice Kernel. These posts are now put together into an 'ejournal'. Download and read at your leisure on your laptop or hand-held device.

Iterative processes have gained widespread acceptance because they help software developers reduce risk and cost, manage change, improve productivity, and deliver more effective, timely solutions. But conventional project management techniques don't work well in iterative projects, and newer iterative management techniques have been poorly documented. "Managing Iterative Software Development Projects" is the solution: a relentlessly practical guide to planning, organizing, estimating, staffing, and managing any iterative project, from start to finish. Leading iterative development experts, Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence introduce a proven, scalable approach that improves both agility and control at the same time, satisfying the needs of developers, managers, and the business alike. Their techniques are easy to understand, and easy to use with any iterative methodology, from Rational Unified Process to Extreme Programming to the Microsoft Solutions Framework. Whatever your role- team leader, program manager, project manager, developer, sponsor, or user representative - this book will help you: * understand the key drivers of success in iterative projectsleverage "time boxing" to define project lifecycles and measure results * use Unified Process phases to facilitate controlled iterative development * master core concepts of iterative project management, including layering and evolution * create project roadmaps, including release plans * discover key patterns of risk management, estimation, organization, and iteration planning * understand what must be controlled centrally, and what you can safely delegate; transition smoothly to iterative processes * scale iterative project management from the smallest to the largest projects * and align software investments with the needs of the business. Whether you are interested in software development using RUP, OpenUP, or other agile processes, this book will help you reduce the anxiety and cost associated with software improvement by providing an easy, non-intrusive path toward improved results - without overwhelming you and your team.

Developers who effectively employ use cases deliver better applications-on time and under budget. The concept behind use cases is perhaps as old as software itself; they express the behavior of systems in terms of how users will ultimately interact with them. Despite this inherent simplicity, the use case approach is frequently misapplied, resulting in functional requirements that are confusing, cumbersome, or redundant. In "Use Case Modeling", experienced use case practitioners Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence share their tips and tricks for applying use cases in various environments. They delve into all aspects of use case modeling and management, demonstrating how development teams can capitalize on the approach's simplicity when modeling complex systems. In this ready reference, readers will discover how to: * introduce a development team to use cases and implement a use case approach; * identify the key elements of a use case model, including actors; and the components of a use case, including basic flow, preconditions, post-conditions, sub-flows, and alternate flows; * master the objectives and challenges of creating detailed descriptions of use cases; * improve their descriptions' readability and consistency; * prevent and remedy common problems arising from the misuse of include, extend, and generalization use case relationships; * organize and conduct a review of a use case model to realize the best possible approach. The book draws extensively on best practices developed at Rational Software Corporation, and presents real-life examples to illustrate the considerable power of use case modeling. As such, Use Case Modeling is sure to give development teams the tools they need to translate vision and creativity into systems that satisfy the most rigorous user demands.

How can software developers, programmers and managers meet the challenges of the 90s and begin to resolve the software crisis? This book is based on Objectory which is the first commercially available comprehensive object-oriented process for developing large-scale industrial systems. Ivar Jacobson developed Objectory as a result of 20 years of experience building real software-based products. The approach takes a global view of system development and focuses on minimizing the system's life cycle cost. Objectory is an extensible industrial process that provides a method for building large industrial systems. This revised printing has been completely updated to make it as accessible and complete as possible. New material includes the revised Testing chapter, in which new product developments are discussed. This book shows how software development can be carried out in a more "industrialized" manner using ObjectOry, a complete environment evolved by the author for the development of large software systems with an object-oriented approach. It relies on three independently developed techniques: conceptual modelling, object-oriented programming, and a block-oriented design technique developed within telecommunications. Suitable for self-study or classroom use, the book is divided into three sections: an introduction to system development and the requirements of an industrial process; the use of object-orientation in the different phases of system development, using ObjectOry; and applications with ObjectOry. Thus, the book presents a coherent picture of how to use object-orientation in system development in a way which makes it accessible to both practitioners in the field and students with no previous knowledge of system development.