Essence of Software Engineering, The: Applying the SEMAT Kernel: Applying the SEMAT Kernel Paperback – 16 Jan. 2013

Based on some guidance and advice for a colleague, the consulting organisation I manage has started looking at the SEMAT Kernel as a means to provide a framework and a form governance to our infrastructure and middleware consulting projects. The book itself, whilst initially academic in content, is very readable and enables you quickly to see how you can apply it to your environment (in our case an open source consulting organisation). One of the problems with any new methodology or framework is that it rarely aligns with an existing way of doing development or business. It seems plausible that you can take the parts that you want initially (in our case alpha, states and a governance framework) and fit it easily to an existing lifecycle. By then speaking the same language, communicating effectively and promoting reuse, the other, more fundamental parts of the SEMAT approach can come in to play.It's an interesting approach and this book provides a good overview, a readable format and some insight on how to apply it into practice.

A book that acknowledges that there is more one software development methodology that works and provides a series of checklists and artifacts that would be helpful in the set up and management of a development project that could make best use of whatever skills are available in the team (rather than trying to recruit or re-train for the latest methodology). Most of it is experience based applied common sense but it is good to see it brought together in one place. Well worth a read even if you don't buy into some of the grander objectives of SEMAT.

In the same way that the invention of standard financial statements (Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss) established a universal platform for understanding the financial state and health of commercial enterprises, the SEMAT Kernel provides a universal platform for understanding the state and health of software engineering projects. The neat thing is that using the SEMAT Kernel does not prescribe your development approach; you can plug your chosen/favourite development practices and methods into the Kernel and gain the benefit of the framework that it provides for understanding, appraising, comparing and progressing your projects. I think the ideas in this book can take software development a significant step nearer being a mature engineering discipline.

The premise of the book is interesting, looking for the meta-patterns in S/W development, but not so sure SEMAT is the right one. Read with a grain of salt.

I've been involved in "Software Engineering", both as a teacher and a user, all of my working life. Like many others I have become frustrated and disillusioned by the failure of "Software Engineering" to live up to its initial ambition - namely to solve the so-called "software crisis". The founders of the discipline of Software Engineering set out in the late 1960's to deal with the fact that most large software projects were completed (very) late, were (way) over budget and had (far too many) defects. Fifty years later these problems are still a reality. In spite of decades of silver bullets and methodology debates we still struggle to deliver high quality software in a repeatable and predictable manner.Has "software engineering" failed? Is there any hope that it will ever succeed.? This book by Ivar Jacobson, et al describes an attempt to get back to basics. They define a very small set of elementary practices - the SEMAT Kernel - and show how these can be used to describe existing methods. This stripping of things down to basic building blocks is a very different approach from what we have seen before. It gives us a new way to understand and use the key concepts at the heart of "good" Software Engineering.There is still much work to be done, but I believe that this book will become a seminal text in the re-founding of the important discipline of Software Engineering. And not only that - its extremely readable!

SEMAT is a very welcome addition to the ongoing discussions on what software-engineering is (craft or engineering), and how the endeavor of building software must be organized. The initiators of SEMAT quite rightly point out that many of the discussions about methods tend to look at the question from a particular viewpoint at the expense of other viewpoints. As a result single truths emerge where some aspects of the endeavor outshine others: Artifact-centric, management-driven processes like RUP versus action-driven, people-centric lean processes such as SCRUM or XP versus architecture-centric methods verses test-centric methods such as TDD versus etc. SEMAT is the result of several years of discussions among some of the figure-heads of software engineering, and thus the result, for the first time explained in the present book, should be considered with interest.SEMAT takes a bold step backwards. It advocates looking at the software endeavor in a more balanced way by identifying the key areas of activity which together are part of the endeavor, and where failure in any of the ereas would imply failure of the overall effort. These key areas are called alphas (a choice of name which seems somewhat arbitrary and may make you feel uneasy if you dislike management waffle or sectarian talk). By default, there are seven such areas: Opportunity, Stakeholders, Requirements, Software System, Team, Work, and Way of Working. For each area there is a high level work-flow with states through which the endeavor progresses from initiation to finish. You may, if you find it necessary, add more such areas, but where exactly the delineation between alpha and the doing within an alpha is remains somewhat unclear. SEMAT has nothing new to offer in terms of content: But unlike, say RUP, which clouds the horizon by too much detail, or SCRUM, which narrows perception to exclude just a little too much, SEMAT highlights what really matters.'The Essence of Software Engineering' for the first time sums up, and explains by way of example, what SEMAT is all about. Which, given the effort apparently spent on the discussions that lead up to the book, seems precious little. The one immediately obvious feature of the book is its repetitiveness: The same statements seem to be made ad nauseam, and the same illustrations shown more often than one cares to look at them. There are seven parts to the book, but most of what can reasonably be said will have been said by the end of the first part. From then on you might find yourself flicking the pages rather quickly to avoid the boredom of repetition. A slimmer and less expensive book would be much welcome.And yet, in spite of these immediate misgivings, you cannot miss 'The Essence of Software Engineering' if you want to stay abreast of the discussions on software engineering as a whole. The bold step backwards taken by SEMAT may indeed help you, in whatever capacity you work in software, get a clear picture of what counts in the software endeavor. This is made quite explicit by SEMAT, and taking in that lesson may help being less zealous about some aspects of working on software at the expense of others.This is the book to read on SEMAT - but of you can help it get one copy only and share it among your colleagues to make the price come in proportion to the actual content. And then let's go away and do alphas.

成田から，ジャカルタに向かう飛行機の中で，The Essence of Software Engineeringを読了した． 良いソフトウェア開発の本質的な７つの次元を定めておき，その状態の包括的な集合によって，開発状況を監視することで，開発チームの状態に応じて，参加者の合意に基づく健全な管理ができるようになる． 一言でいうと，ソフトウェア工学の技法を，利用する立場に立って，再構成している．なお，本書で提案されているSEMAT kernelは，omgでの標準化も進められている．　いろんな視点が入っているので，発展が期待できる．よい書物というのは，そこから多様な発想を生み出すものである．ということで，本書は，間違いなく，良書である．

Bought because it was reference material in the textbook "Software Engineering" It probably has a place but I didn't think it applies much to my line of work. I also felt like it was a sales pitch for the authors methodology.