Welcome Newsletter 01/07/2015

Copyright @ SEMAT Edited by Mira Kajko-Mattsson 1(5)

She who sees Horus and She who sees Seth

2015-2

Letter from the SEMAT Founder and Chairman

SEMAT is moving forward slowly , yet steadily . We are working and progressing on several frontiers. The fruits of our labor are becoming clearly noticeable all over the world.

Education: An absolute must for the long-term success of SEMAT is that we get a great education program for

universities. Mira Kajko Mattsson at KTH in Sweden, Cecile Peraire at Carnegie Mellon in Silicon Valley, Carlos

Jaramillo at National University of Columbia and many other people have been working here and many more people have

expressed interest in participating. As more output come from the Practice Area, they will be able to make a more

complete program, and we are getting there.

Practice: The Essence User Guide is ready for publication thanks to Paul McMahon at PEM Systems in U.S.A. and Ian

Spence at Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) who led this effort as co-chairs of the Practice Area in SEMAT. The Practice

Area is now working on a Practice Development Guide, which is a good way to get other people to develop practices

themselves. All these publications will be accessible from the new SEMAT web site, which will be open soon. We need

say 50 practices described on top of Essence. Then people get something readily valuable. IJI has just announced an

Agile Essentials practice package including seven practices. The Agile Essentials extracts (essentializes) the useful

practice guidance from XP, Scrum, Kanban and other popular agile approaches, and presents it as a useful and usable set

of practice cards that development teams can freely select, combine and adapt to help them work effectively as a team. A

total of 29 practices are being developed at IJI and will be made public in the next 6 months. Other people such as June

Sung Park, Arne Berre at SINTEF in Norway are working on describing practices (such as Scrum, Agile Modeling,

Business Engineering and Project Management) using Essence.

Tool: Tools are needed for success in the industry. uEngine Solutions in Korea is in the process of developing an open

source tool to support Essence-based practice development and managementrelease date is not far away. IJI has for

many years developed a set of tools, which they are using in customer engagements.

continued on page 2

In this issue:

the SEMAT Founder Ivar Jacobson and

the SEMAT Chairman June Sung Park

provide a semi annual report on the

SEMAT activities and progress.

Michael Goedicke reports on GTSE

2015.

Paul McMahon forwards feedback from

a tutorial on Essence at Binghamton

University.

Chapter reports from Korea, Japan and

Latin America.

Reports form Education and Practice

Areas.

Letter from the SEMAT Founder and Chairman, continued

Industry Adoption: We have a number of good case storiesfrom Fujitsu, Red Hat, Munich Re and Huawei. Many

more companies have started using or experimenting with Essence including Google, LG Electronics and Brazilian

Government. An Essence-in-Practice Conference was held in the OMG Technical Meeting in Berlin last month. The

video recordings of presentations in this seminar including success stories will be provided on the SEMAT web site soon.

Essentialization: Essence is spreading to other disciplines and methodologies. A discussion is going on to set up a new

area within SEMAT to develop Essence for Systems Engineering. A book titled Software in the Systems Context

coedited by Bud Lawson and Ivar Jacobson with almost 20 authors (including Barry Boehm, Ian Sommerville, Tom Gilb,

Don ONeill, Paul McMahon and June Sung Park) will be published within the next couple of months. Essence is a major

idea in many chapters of the book. This will certainly result in an increased interest in Essence among software and

system engineers. Discussions are also underway for reconstructing software engineering methods based on Essence

including a methodology for Internet of Things/Industrial Internet and an agile approach developed by a well-known

methodology consortium.

Theory: The work on a General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE) is moving forward. The 4th annual GTSE

Workshop was held on the ICSE conference in Florence in May, where Barry Boehm, Pontus Johnson, June Sung Park

and others presented new theoretical results on software engineering including Essence-based adaptive software

engineering.

New Website: A new SEMAT website based on the Liferay Portal platform is just about to be launched. This work is led

by Michael Goedicke at University of Duisberg in Germany and Rick Jang at uEngine Solutions in Korea. Those of us

who have seen the latest of the new site are impressed and cannot wait until it goes live.

OMG Standard: Essence 1.1 has been accepted by the OMG Architecture Board thanks to Ed Seidewitz who chaired

Essence 1.1 Revision TF and many more around the world who submitted and commented on various issues. Once it is

adopted by the OMG Platform Technology Committee and the OMG Board of Directors, version 1.1 will become the

official standard. Version 1.1 is an incremental update, making a small number of clarifications and corrections to the

specification and adding a new kind of card for "Level of Detail". An Essence 1.2 Revision TF has now been chartered to

work on further improvements of the specification. June Sung Park at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and

Technology (KAIST) has been named as its chair.

All of us active in working within SEMAT are very positive about the progress and success of SEMAT. However, in

order to accelerate industry adoption of Essence, we definitely need more volunteers to define together practices and

methods using the Essence Kernel and Language, and do many more things to help refound software engineering.

Everyone who receives this newsletter is welcome to participate in SEMAT, and to participate, you may just drop either

of us an email telling your interests.

All of us actively working within SEMAT are very positive to the result achieved this far. We enjoy moving forward

towards fulfilling our mission and towards observing the profound impact of Essence in all frontiers of software

engineering domain such as education, practices, tools, standardization and so forth.

Ivar Jacobson, Founder and Chief Advisor of SEMAT June Sung Park, Chairman and President of SEMAT, Inc.

Copyright @ SEMAT Edited by Mira Kajko-Mattsson 2(5)

SEMAT Events

Figure 3. The tutorial participants including the presenters

Report on Workshop on General Theories of Software Engineering

Michael Goedicke

Edited by Mira Kajko-Mattsson 3(5) Copyright @ SEMAT

The 2015 GTSE workshop was held in conjunction with the

International Conference on Software Engineering in Florence,

Italy, on May 18th. The workshop was divided into four sessions

combining paper presentations and in-depth discussions. The co-

chairs provided an introduction and Professor Barry Boehm gave a

compelling keynote speech on Developing and Evolving a Value-

Based Theory of Software Engineering.

Papers were solicited following the ICSE workshop timeline. We

received a total of 18 submissions, each of which received a

minimum of three reviews. To maximize time for fruitful

discussion, we limited acceptance to eight papers. Our process was

simple: seven papers had clearly positive reviews and were

accepted; of the three papers with borderline reviews we accepted

the one that we believed would most stimulate discussion.

The eight papers selected for presentation at the workshop convey a

wide range of perspectives and contributions. Johnson and Ekstedt

[1] and Park [2] both suggest theoretical foundations for a GTSE.

Staples [3] and Perry and Batory [4] meanwhile provide insightful

commentaries on the constructing GTSEs. In addition, Hall and

Rapanotti [5], Murtaza et al. [6], Barn and Barn [7] and Ghazarian

[8] propose specific theories, each of which may contribute to one

or more broad theoretical views of software engineering.

Program and other related information can be found

at http://semat.org/?page_id=1452. The accepted

papers were:

[1] P. Johnson and M. Ekstedt, Exploring theory of cognition for

general theory of software engineering - Predicting the effort of

program language comprehension, in Proceedings of the 4th

SEMAT Workshop on General Theory of Software Engineering,

Florence, Italy: IEEE, 2005.

[2] J. Park, Essence-based, goal-driven adaptive software

engineering, in Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop on

General Theory of Software Engineering, Florence, Italy, 2015.

[3] M. Staples, The unending quest for valid, useful software

engineering theories, in Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop

on General Theory of Software Engineering, Florence, Italy: IEEE,

2015.

[4] D. E. Perry and D. Batory, A theory about the structure of

GTSEs, in Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop on General

Theory of Software Engineering, Florence, Italy: IEEE, 2015.

[5] J. G. Hall and L. Rapanotti, Towards a design-theoretic

characterisation of software development process models, in

Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop on General Theory of

Software Engineering, Florence, Italy: IEEE, 2015.

[6] S. S. Murtaza, H.-L. Abdelwahab, N. Madhavii, and M. Gittens,

Towards an emerging theory for the diagnosis of faulty functions

in function-call traces, in Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT

Workshop on General Theory of Software Engineering, Florence,

Italy: IEEE, 2015.

[7] B. Barn and R. Barn, An approximate theory for value

sensitivity, in Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop on

General Theory of Software Engineering, Florence, Italy: IEEE,

2015.

[8] A. Ghazarian, A theory of software complexity, in

Proceedings of the 4th SEMAT Workshop on General Theory of

Software Engineering, Florence, Italy: IEEE, 2015.

Michael Goedicke

Great Response at Binghamton University Essence Seminar

Thirty-nine participants from multiple industries including defense, medical, and financial attended Paul E

McMahons half-day seminar, Essence: A Thinking Framework to Power Software Development Team

Performance on June 4 at Binghamton University (http://www.binghamton.edu/watson/industry/professional-

development/programs/essence.html).

The feedback from the attendees was overwhelmingly positive with many expressing interest in follow-on sessions.

Our next step is to conduct a survey to determine where greatest interest lies for follow on sessions. Possible

options include conducting the same seminar again, and a session focused on how Essence can help organizations

in highly regulated environments (i.e. defense, medical, financial) with an interest in transitioning to a more agile

and lean way of working without risking meeting their compliance requirements.

Paul McMahon

Japan Chapter

In Japan Chapter (Chair: Prof. Hironori Washizaki, Waseda

University), some members are continuing on translations of

SEMAT articles and books including "The Essence of Software

Engineering" into Japanese. Moreover, Japan Chapter is

planning to have new study group meetings in the near future.

Hironori Washizaki

Chapter Reports

???? Chen Zhong

Latin American Chapter

Latin America has been active with Essence as a new OMG

standard. Previous editions of the Latinamerican Software

Engineering Symposium have been linked to the Essence.

LASES 2015 will be again the meeting of the Latinamerican

SEMAT enthusiasts. Bogot will join Medelln, Lima, and

Barranquilla in hosting the new ideas about SEMAT in Latin

America. Next November SEMAT and Agile will be the focus

of Latin American researchers and practitioners. This time the

Keynote Speakers will be Paul McMahon, Scott Ambler, and

Philippe Kruchten. In Addition, Ken Schwaber---father of

Scrum---will give a talk by videoconference. LASES 2015 will

be an opportunity to see how close are Agile and SEMAT.

Latin America is also active in promoting several Ph.D. and

M.Sc. thesis about SEMAT. Some of such theses are starting to

be defended, since several others are progressing in a good

way. Issues like kernel consistency, method representation,

practices, and complementary theories to the Essence are

covered. We are also working on the usage of SEMAT for

representing empirical software engineering laws and metrics.

From the practitioner point of view, we are promoting alliances

among universities and companies for studying the Essence

kernel and promoting new ways to spread the SEMAT

message to practitioners and clients. We are making this

possible in some countries of our region. As a result, we expect

to see soon some real projects involving universities, software

companies, and clients, as the SEMAT initiative is suggesting

for reinforcing our community.

SEMAT is growing stronger in Latin America. Very important

things are coming for the SEMAT initiative from Latin

America.

Carlos Mario Zapata Jaramillo

Edited by Mira Kajko-Mattsson 4(5) Copyright @ SEMAT

Korea Chapter

The Korea Chapter of SEMAT had the Second Annual

Membership Meeting and a symposium on Essence in Seoul on

November 13, 2014 where 62 people from 40 companies

attended and 5 presentations were given about the experience

of using Essence in respective companies. Five people from

the Korea Chapter attended the Essence-in-Practice Conference

in Berlin on June 18th. Rick Jang, CEO of uEngine Solutions

and Chair of the Tools Area in the Korea Chapter, presented in

the conference about "Essencia", an Essence-support tool being

developed as an open source software, which can assist

practitioners to define software engineering practices using

Essence kernel and language, assemble practices into a project-

specific method, orchestrate the workflow of project activities

based on the defined method, and monitor the progress of alpha

states using a a dashboard.

June Sung Park

Area Reports

Edited by Mira Kajko-Mattsson 5(5) Copyright @ SEMAT

Figure 1. KTH students of the 2015 year

working with the alpha cards

Right now, the Education Area is in the process of developing

a scenario describing how the Requirement Item sub-alpha

boosts progress of the Requirements alpha. The Educcation

Area is ready with two scenarios describing the use of the

Essence alphas and two handouts for practicing them. Both the

scenarios and handouts were practiced on a bachelor software

engineering course at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Here, we dare say that the KTH students of 2015 were the first

students in the world to be exposed to the SEMAT scenarios.

The first scenario concerns kick-starting a project dealing with

scaling up and modernizing a legacy system [1]. Here, the

Kernel Alphas are used for establishing the project status. The

second scenario concerns monitoring the progress and health

of a project dealing with the development of an online

university course management system [2]. Here, the Alphas are

used for identifying and solving various pain points.

The second scenario is supplemented with two handouts

providing exercises on the Essence Kernel [3, 4]. Each handout

deals with one Alpha only (Requirements and Team). The goal

is to help a novice student to focus on one Alpha, and thereby,

help him/her better understand its practical usage.

The introduction of the SEMAT ESSENCE was conducted in

two stages. In the first stage, the students would read the first

scenario, identify understanding problems and document them.

The goal was twofold: (1) to help students understand what the

project status evaluation looked like, and (2) to find out

whether they had any understanding difficulties. To our great

surprise, very few students had any understanding problems.

In the second stage, the students would do the same; this time,

however, they would study the second scenario and they would

exercise the two handouts. For each handout, they would

define the state of its respective Alpha on the basis of the

descriptions provided in the handout. Even here, we got nicely

surprised. Most of the students could easily identify the status

of each handout alpha studied.

In the year of 2015, the students were prepared not only to

monitor the progress and health of their projects but also for

planning projects, for identifying project problems and risks

and for defining solutions and various action items. Two

photographs of students working with the alphas are presented

in Figure 1. Depending on the purpose, they either hang the

alpha cards on the wall or organized them on the table.

Cecile Peraire and Mira Kajko-Mattsson

[1] Kajko-Mattsson, M., Palank, B., Myburgh, B., McMahon,

P.E., Peraire, C., Menezez, W., A Scenario on Kick-Starting a

Project, www.semat.org, retrieved on May 5, 2015.

[2] Peraire, C., Kajko-Mattsson, M., Myburgh, B., McMahon,

P.E., Menezez, W., Palank, B., A Scenario on Solvning Pain

Points, www.semat.org, retrieved on May 5, 2015.

[3] Peraire, C., Kajko-Mattsson, M., Myburgh, B., Vierira

Nelson M.A., McMahon, P.E., Solving Pain Points with Team

Alpha, www.semat.org, retrieved on May 5, 2015.

[4] Vierira Nelson M.A., Kajko-Mattsson, M., Myburgh, B.,

Peraire, C., McMahon, P.E., Solvning Pain Points with Team

Alpha, www.semat.org, retrieved on May 5, 2015.

Education Area

Practice Area

In the practice area volunteer groups are continuing to

work on multiple competency scenarios that will be used to

help practitioners and students learn how to use the

Essence competencies to assess team skills. Work is also

continuing on the practice development guide and multiple

practice examples are in the process of being developed by

volunteers. Paul McMahon