The term paradigm shift may be a bit overused these days; nevertheless, the kernel-based Essence approach to software engineering can quite reasonably be considered to be such a shift. It truly represents a profound change of viewpoint for the software-engineering community. In this paper, Ivar Jacobon and Ed Seidewitz explore what happened to to the promise of rigorous, disciplined, professional practices for software development, like those observed in other engineering disciplines and explain how the Essence standard is the answer.

Combining agile and SEMAT yields more advantages than either one alone.

This paper discusses how two current popular movements complement one another to provide a powerful basis for software development.

Surgeons, astronauts, airline pilots and software professionals. What do all these people have in common? Well, for one, all of these professionals are very highly trained – in most cases in takes many years to reach a point where you can practice without supervision.

But even highly trained, experienced professionals can have a bad day, and make the occasional mistake. The problem is, if you’re an astronaut, airline pilot, or surgeon, and you make a mistake, lives can be lost. Software development, perhaps, is somewhat less life-critical, most of the time.

Simple checklists can help reduce human error dramatically. Some reports suggest that surgical checklists introduced by the World Health Organization have helped reduce mortality rates in major surgery by as much as 47%. Neil Armstrong had a checklist printed on the back of his glove (pictured), to ensure he remembered the important things as he made history as the first person to walk on the moon.

A thinking framework in the form of an actionable kernel, by Ivar Jacobson, Pan-Wei Ng, Paul E. McMahon, Ian Spence and Svante Lidman.