The Essence of Software Engineering: Applying the SEMAT Kernel

Foreword by Richard Soley

Software runs our world; software-intensive systems, as Grady Booch calls them, are the core structure that drives equity and derivative trading, communications, logistics, government services, management of great national and international military organizations, and medical systems—and even allows elementary school teacher Mr. Smith to send homework assignments to little Susie. Even mechanical systems have given way to software-driven systems (think of fly-by-wire aircraft, for example); the trend is not slowing, but accelerating. We depend on software, and often we depend on it for our very lives. Amazingly, more often than not software development resembles an artist’s craft far more than an engineering discipline. ...