The Computing Language Research Group and the Essence

Recently, my good friend Ivar Jacobson ask me about the work we are doing regarding Essence, the recent OMG Standard for managing practices and methods of the software engineering. I've told him we have a lot of work for sharing! Here, I present a short summary about what we are doing:

• We have an extrapolation of the Essence towards the project-based disciplines. We called it Quintessence and we have right now the possibility to define practices and methods in any of such disciplines. This is the M.Sc. thesis we wrote about it:

Antony Henao, M.Sc. Thesis, title: "Towards a theory for defining a project management multidisciplinary kernel: an approach based on Abstract Level Progress Health Attributes"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/69339

• We developed some M.Sc. and Ph.D. thesis about Essence and Quintessence, as follows:

Antonio Vera, Ph.D. Thesis, title: "A representation based on the Quintessence about best practices of business process improvement"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/82701

Rubén Sánchez, Ph.D. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Modelo teórico del proceso de desarrollo de ingeniería electrónica"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/75744

Diana Torres, Ph.D. Thesis, title: "Formulating a theory about interoperability among heterogeneous software systems, based on the Semat kernel"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/76654

Claudia Durango, Ph.D. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Definición de buenas prácticas de desarrollo de sistemas de información geográfica utilizando el núcleo de Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/76563?locale-attribute=en

Leidy Jiménez, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Representación en el núcleo de Semat de prácticas de métodos de desarrollo basados en planes"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/56662

Esteban Arango, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), Title: "Especificación en OCL de los elementos del núcleo de Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/56665

Esteban Yepes, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Representación de los principios del manifiesto ágil en el núcleo de Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/60894

Jorge Mu?oz, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Equipos de desarrollo de software: sus prácticas representadas en Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/56219

Miguel Betín, M.Sc. Thesis, title: "Distributed software development method representations on top of the SEMAT Kernel"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/59040

Nelys Aguirre, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Representación de las prácticas de ISO/IEC 29110 en el núcleo de Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/63856

John Valencia, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Representación de las prácticas de la meta específica de CMMI desarrollo de los requisitos del cliente empleando el núcleo de Semat"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/64725

Juan Hernández, M.Sc. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Prácticas de ludificación en el desarrollo de software representadas en el núcleo de SEMAT"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/69399

Maria Gómez, Ph.D. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Formulación de una teoría general para la ense?anza de ingeniería de software"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/63303

Alexander Barón, Ph.D. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Modelo para la definición unificada de la práctica como constructo Teórico en ingeniería de software"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/76404

Wilder Perdomo, Ph.D. Thesis (only available in Spanish), title: "Modelo para la medición del progreso del alfa sistema de software del núcleo de Semat con base en las normas ISO/IEC 2502n e ISO/IEC 2504n"

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/76577

• We wrote some papers related to Essence:

A first course in software engineering methods and theory. Zapata, C. M., Jacobson, I. Revista Dyna, vol 81, no. 183, 2014, pp. 231-241.

https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/74343

La esencia de la ingeniería de software: el núcleo de Semat. Zapata, C. M. Revista Latinoamericana de Ingeniería de Software, vol. 1, no. 3, 2013, pp. 71-78. Translation of the paper "The essence of software engineering - the SEMAT kernel, published by Communications of the ACM, vol. 55, no. 12, 2012, pp. 42-49, written by Ivar Jacobson, Pan-Wei Ng, Paul E. McMahon, Ian Spence, Svante Lidman.

https://revistas.unla.edu.ar/software/article/view/97

SEMAT game: applying a project management practice. Zapata, C. M., Rojas, M., Arango, R., Jiménez, L. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, vol. 42, 2015, pp. 133-143.

https://absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/article/view/2922

Best practices of interoperability among heterogeneous software systems: a Semat-based representation. Torres, D., Zapata, C. M: Revista Facultad de Ingeniería UPTC, vol. 26, no. 44, 2017, pp. 157-166.

https://revistas.uptc.edu.co/index.php/ingenieria/article/view/5790

A first practice in curriculum design represented in a software engineering teaching kernel. Zapata, C. M., Insuasti, J. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, vol. 46, 2019, pp. 111-118.

https://absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/article/view/3222

Representación en el núcleo de la Esencia de SEMAT de las competencias de un equipo de desarrollo de software (in Spanish). Durango, C., Zapata Rueda, C. M., Zapata, C. M. Información tecnológica, vol. 30, no. 4, 2019, pp. 217-226.

https://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718-07642019000400217&script=sci_arttext

SETMAT (Software Engineering Teaching Method and Theory): una teoría para la ense?anza de ingeniería de software (in Spanish). Gómez, M. C., Zapata, C. M., Astudillo, H. Revista Ibérica de Sistemas e Tecnologias de Informa??o, vol. 19, No. 4, 2019, pp. 721-734.

https://risti.xyz/issues/risti19.pdf

Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Regularization of Alpha Checklists in the Semat Essence Kernel: A Terminology Unification Approach. Henao, A., Zapata, C. M. 2017 5th International Conference in Software Engineering Research and Innovation (CONISOFT), Merida, Mexico, 2017, pp. 34-43, doi: 10.1109/CONISOFT.2017.00012.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8337933

A Proposal for Improving the Essence Standard by Using Terminology Unification. Zapata, C. M., Henao, A. Revista Ingeniería, vol. 26, no. 2, 2021, pp. 213-232.

https://revistas.udistrital.edu.co/index.php/reving/article/view/16428#full-articleXML

• We edited two books with many chapters related to Essence:

Carlos Zapata, Luis Fernando Castro (Ed.), software engineering: methods, modeling, and teaching, volume 3, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Minas, 2014

https://minas.medellin.unal.edu.co/centro-editorial/libros/software-engineering-methods-modeling-and-teaching-vol-3

Carlos Mario Zapata Jaramillo, Claudia Elena Durango Vanegas, Wilder Perdomo Charry (Ed.), software engineering: methods, modeling, and teaching, volume 4, Editorial Bonaventuriana, 2017

https://www.editorialbonaventuriana.usb.edu.co/index.php/component/djcatalog2/item/379-software-engineering

• Essence is the basis for most of the courses I am teaching right now: requirements engineering, software project management, software quality, and ict project management. Next semester I will start a graduate course called software engineering practice, with the entire foundation of Essence. In addition, we continuously offer the course we designed in a paper, called "software engineering methods and theory." (see the publication at the beginning of the papers: https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/74343)

• We have many practices represented in the Essence standard, similar to the one you can see in the headline of this article.

• We developed many games about the Essence and the Quintessence. This is the way in which we explain the standard and our way of working for giving the main insights of the Essence standard to our students.

• We have much more to come.

Are you interested in? Please let me know what you think about the work we are doing!