Grady Booch (born February 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh.

[6] Booch served as Chief Scientist of Rational Software Corporation from its founding in 1981 through its acquisition by IBM in 2003, where he continued to work until March 2008.

[8] The method was authored by Booch when he was working for Rational Software (acquired by IBM), published in 1992 and revised in 1994.

The method is composed of an object modeling language,[9] an iterative object-oriented development process,[10] and a set of recommended practices.

The methodology was widely used in software engineering for object-oriented analysis and design and benefited from ample documentation and support tools.

It is made of the following cycle: The notation aspect of the Booch method has now been superseded by the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which features graphical elements from the Booch method along with elements from the object-modeling technique (OMT) and object-oriented software engineering (OOSE).

For instance, he wrote the foreword to Design Patterns, an early and highly influential book in the field.

Grady has served as architect and architectural mentor for numerous complex software-intensive systems around the world.