Semat Kernel Quick Reference

The Essence Kernel

Quick Reference Guide

Version 0.1

Introduction

This Quick Reference Guides provides a brief introduction to the Essence Kernel. It is designed to support the use of the Essence Cards by software development teams and, in particular, the games that can be played with them.

The use of the kernel and the cards has many benefits for individuals, teams and organizations. These include helping you to:

• Understand where you are

• Understand what needs to be addressed

• Track progress and health

• Keep projects in balance and avoid catastrophic failures

• Form good sprint goals and other objectives

• Form teams

• Define practice independent checkpoints, milestones and lifecycles

The Kernel is both simple and incredibly powerful as it 1) captures the key concepts involved in software engineering, 2) allows the progress and health of any software engineering endeavor to be tracked and assessed, and 3) provides the common ground for the definition of software engineering methods and practices.

Refer to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the Essence User Guide on the SEMAT web site (www.semat.org) for answers to common questions related to the use of Essence.

What is Essence?

Essence provides us with a thinking framework that allows teams to understand where they are and acts as a foundation for their way-of-working. At the heart of the Essence approach is the Essence Kernel – a simple state-driven model of software engineering that captures the small set of things that are universal to all software engineering endeavors by including the things that a team always has to consider or work with when developing software.

The kernel contains seven key elements - Requirements, Software System, Team, Work, Way of Working, Opportunity and Stakeholders. Through states defined on these elements, the...