International Association of Software Architects to Explore New Development Paradigm in April 26 Webinar

April 23, 2007; 10:09 AM
 The International Association of Software Architects (IASA), a 5,000-member association focused on defining and supporting the professional duties of IT architects, will conduct a web seminar introducing a new paradigm for software development practices on Wednesday, April 26, 10-11am (Eastern).With the theme of “Enough of Processes, Let’s Do Practices,” the webinar will feature renowned software engineer Ivar Jacobson, an expert in process improvement and father of the Use Case concept.

The webinar will take place at www.IASAhome.org, and is open to the public at no charge.

One of the principal founders of the Unified Modeling Language and a recognized pioneer in object-oriented programming Jacobson will explore the outer limits of modern software development practices, whether they come from the software engineering camp or from the social engineering (agile) camp. He is author of Object-Oriented Software Engineering: a Use Case Driven Approach, and The Unified Software Development Process, among other titles.

“The world of software development is constantly changing and evolving. New ideas arise all the time and existing ideas go in and out of fashion,” said Jacobson. “Software development processes find it very hard to keep up with this rapid rate of change, especially as they find themselves quickly going out of fashion or becoming bloated as they bolt on more and more information. Teams find themselves struggling as they try to mix-and-match practices from various sources into a coherent way-of-working or work out where to start their improvements.”

The webinar will discuss a new approach to capturing and sharing experience, where:

• Practices are First Class Citizens,
• Practices can be made smart to truly help the developers in their work,
• Practices can be used individually or in a multitude of combinations
• Process is just a composition of Practices, and
• Teams compose the process they need by selecting just the practice that they want to use

To enable this, Jacobson said, a number of innovations are required: innovations related to the way that practices are collected, presented and applied. The webinar will introduce the new paradigm and its support by EssWork which is an environment for working with practices. In doing so we will demonstrate how the Essential Unified Process is composed as a collection of eight separate practices.

Jacobson founded the company that became Objectory, a design and development company that took advantage of his use-case approach and which was eventually acquired by Rational Software, where Jacobson started working with Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh to first create the UML. He later developed the Rational Unified Process, RUP. Rational was bought by IBM in 2003 and Jacobson stayed on until May 2004 as an executive technical consultant.

Since that time, he has worked with Microsoft to produce an Essential Unified Process for Visual Studio Team System, which he describes as a "super light and agile" RUP.

IASA is a vendor agnostic, non-profit association focused on defining and supporting the professional duties of IT architects. The April 26 webinar is part of IASA’s continuing commitment to presenting critical technical concepts and career enhancement approaches for its 5,000 members.

About IASA

The International Association of Software Architects is the premier association focused on the architecture profession through the advancement of best practices and education. Established in 2002, IASA delivers programs and services to IT architects of all levels around the world. A non-profit business association, IASA is dedicated to the advancement and sharing of issues related to software architecture in the enterprise, product, education and government sectors.

The association is committed to improving the quality of the IT architecture industry by developing and delivering standards, education programs and developing accreditation programs and services that optimize the development of architecture profession. IASA membership consists of approximately 5,000 members located in more than 40 countries. Further information is available at www.iasahome.org.