The Essentials of Modern Software Engineering: Free the Practices from the Method Prisons! / Ivar Jacobson ... [et.al.]

It includes Index.

The first course in software engineering is the most critical. Education must start from an understanding of the heart of software development, from familiar ground that is common to all software development endeavors. This book is an in-depth introduction to software engineering that uses a systematic, universal kernel to teach the essential elements of all software engineering methods.

This kernel, "Essence," is a vocabulary for defining methods and practices. Essence was envisioned and originally created by Ivar Jacobson and his colleagues, developed by Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) and approved by The Object Management Group (OMG) as a standard in 2014. Essence is a practice-independent framework for thinking and reasoning about the practices we have and the practices we need. Essence establishes a shared and standard understanding what is at the heart of software development. Essence is agnostic to any particular method, lifecycle independent, programming language independent, concise, scalable, extensible, and formally specified. Essence frees the practices from their method prisons.

The first part of the book describes Essence, the essential elements to work with, the essential things to do and the essential competencies you need when developing software. The other three parts describe more and more advanced use cases of Essence. Using real but manageable examples, it covers the fundamentals of Essence and the innovative use of serious games to support software engineering. It also explains how current practices such as user stories, use cases, Scrum, and micro-services can be described using Essence, and illustrates how their activities can be represented using the Essence notions of cards and checklists. The fourth part of the book offers a vision how Essence can be scaled to support large, complex systems engineering.

Essence is supported by an ecosystem developed and maintained by a community of experienced people worldwide. From this ecosystem, professors and students can select what they need and create their own way of working, thus learning how to create one way of working that matches the particular situation and needs.

Table of Contents

Part 1 - The Essence of Software Engineering
1. From Programming to Software Engineering
2. Software Engineering Methods and Practices
3. Essence in a Nutshell
4. Identifying the Key Elements of Software Engineering
5. The Language of Software Engineering
6. The Kernel of Software Engineering
7. Key Principles: Practical, Actionable and Extensible
8. Reflection on Theory

Part 2 - Developing Software with Essence
9. Applying Essence in the Small - Playing Serious Games
10. Kick Starting Development Using Essence
11. Developing with Essence
12. The Development Journey
13. Reflection on Kernel

Part 3 - Small Scale Development with Practices
14. Kick Starting Development with Practices
15. Running with Scrum
16. Running with User Story Lite
17. Running with Use-Case Lite
18. Running with Microservices
19. Putting the Practices Together: Composition

Part 4 - Large Scale Complex Development
20. What it Means to Scale
21. Essentializing Practices
22. Scaling Up to Large and Complex Development
23. Reaching Out to Different Kinds of Development
24. Being Agile with Practices and Methods
25. Reflecting on the SEMAT Journey

APPENDIX: A Brief History of Software and Software Engineering
Author Biographies