Resources

SEMAT (Software Engineering Methods and Theory) is an international initiative designed to identify a common ground, or universal standard, for software engineering. It is supported by some of the most distinguished contributors to the field. Creating a simple language to describe methods and practices, the SEMAT team expresses this common ground as a kernel–or framework–of elements essential to all software development. The Essence of Software Engineering introduces this kernel and shows how to apply it when developing software and communicating among teams and team members. It is a book for software professionals, not methodologists. Its usefulness to developers, who need to evaluate and choose the best practices for their particular projects, goes well beyond the description or application of any single methodology.

Agile rightly puts great store on the critical importance of transparency in all things at all times. To build trust and enable predictability, we need it to be transparently clear to all stakeholders what we are doing, how we are doing it, why we are doing it that way, and how well it is going - i.e. what progress are we making towards achieving the required outcomes. The Agile Essentials puts a toolkit of productive process tools literally into the hands of software development professionals, where it can deliver value every day in prompting and guiding the team and supporting team communication and collaboration.

Part of the IJI Agile Essentials Starter Pack of Practice Cards Agile Essentials practices provide a starter kit that describes key common aspects of team-based development. Each practice contains cards that provide succinct advice on how to successfully adopt and apply the practice.

Part of the IJI Agile Essentials Starter Pack of Practice Cards Agile Essentials practices provide a starter kit that describes key common aspects of team-based development. Each practice contains cards that provide succinct advice on how to successfully adopt and apply the practice.

Alpha State Cards are a simple, easy way to track status of a software project and help plan next steps.

Use this practice to actively address the technical risks facing the project and establish an appropriate architecture.

Use this practice to break the project up into a series of smaller, self-contained, time-boxed, mini-projects and get your teams working collaboratively and objectively to plan, execute and track their project.

As with any new initiative people are struggling to see how it fits into the world and how it relates to all the other things going on. For example does it improve or replace their current ways of working. Is it something like lean that supports and furthers the aims of the Agile Movement, or is it something like waterfall planning that is in opposition to an agile approach? The good news is that both Agile and SEMAT promote non-prescriptive value-based philosophies that encourage software development teams to select and use whatever practices best fit their context and, most importantly, continuously inspect, adapt and improve their way of working. In this keynote we will look at how these two initiatives complement one another, providing the perfect foundation for teams that want to master the art of software development.

Use Case Definition:  Use Cases have been around for almost 30 years as a requirements approach and have been part of the inspiration for more recent techniques such as user stories. Now the inspiration has flown in the other direction. Use-Case 2.0 is the new generation of use-case driven development - light, agile and lean - inspired by user stories, Scrum and Kanban.

This Reference Guide provides a brief introduction to the Alphas and Alpha State Cards. It is designed to support the use the Alpha State Cards by software development teams and, in particular, the games that can be played with them.