a small deck of cards in their pockets, which they can easily pull out to discuss the current status of development and the work assignment and collaboration among team members. Teams can also discuss areas of improvement by referring to the cards. Thus, the kernel is not merely a heavyweight description of what a team needs to do. Rather, it forms an essential part of what they are doing each day.

The kernel in action. The kernel has many applications in software professionals’ everyday lives. They include:

˲ Running an iteration (or sprint).

˲ Running the entire development from idea to product.

˲ Scaling to large organizations and complex software-development endeavors.

The first application, planning an iteration, is used here as an example of what a team can do with the kernel. The others are covered fully in The Essence of Software Engineering—Applying the SEMAT Kernel. 6

The example presented here as-
sumes that a company has very little
in the way of formal processes. In the
past it has relied on having skilled and
creative individuals on experienced
teams, but the company is now grow-
ing and has many new hires. These
new employees, mostly fresh out of
university, have good technical skills—
for example, in programming lan-
guages—but are less equipped in other
aspects of software development, such
as working with stakeholders to gain
agreement on requirements.

1. Determine where you are: Work out the current state of the endeavor.

2. Determine where to go: Decide what to emphasize next and what the objectives of the next iteration will be.

3. Determine how to get there: Agree on the tasks the team needs to do to achieve the objectives.

Determine Where the team
is using the Kernel

Let’s assume that Smith and his team are six weeks into development. They have provided an early demonstration of the system to their stakeholders, who are pleased and provide valuable feedback. The system is not yet usable by end users, however. You can use the kernel to do this in a number of ways. If you are using alpha state cards, then you can do a walk-through as follows:

1. Lay out the cards for each alpha in a row on a table with the first state on the left and the final state on the right.

2. Walk through each state and ask your team if you have achieved that state.

3. If the state is achieved, move that

figure 5. the team uses the alphas to determine the current states.