INVITATION to SEMAT - the SOFTWARE ENGINEERING METHOD AND THEORY initiative

Hello, You may have heard that the three of us have been quietly planning a "revolution". The goal is to re-found software engineering as a rigorous discipline. We recognize that the natural tendency in our field is to perturb systems minimally into approximate correctness, but this path cannot be sustained any longer if we are to support the computing industry and help it meet the demands of society. We need to restart on a solid basis, taking advantage of all that has been learned in software engineering theory and practice over the past five decades. The effort is underway, It is now public at www.semat.org. On this site you will find the Call for Action statement. CALL FOR ACTION STATEMENT: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING METHOD AND THEORY * Software engineering is gravely hampered today by immature practices. Specific problems include: * The prevalence of fads more typical of fashion industry than of an engineering discipline. * The lack of a sound, widely accepted theoretical basis. * The huge number of methods and method variants, with differences little understood and artificially magnified. * The lack of credible experimental evaluation and validation. * The split between industry practice and academic research. * We support a process to refound software engineering based on a solid theory, proven principles and best practices that: * Include a kernel of widely-agreed elements, extensible for specific uses * Addresses both technology and people issues * Are supported by industry, academia, researchers and users * Support extension in the face of changing requirements and technology Some of the well-known signatories to this Call for Action include Pekka Abrahamsson, Scott Ambler, Victor Basili, Jean Bézivin, Dines Bjorner, Barry Boehm, Alan W Brown, Alistair Cockburn, Larry Constantine, Erich Gamma, Tom Gilb, Ellen Gottesdiener, Sam Guckenheimer, David Harel, Brian Henderson-Sellers, Watts Humphrey, Martin Griss, Ivar Jacobson, Philippe Kruchten, Stephen Mellor, Bertrand Meyer, James Odell, Meilir Page-Jones, Bob Martin, Ken Schwaber, Alec Sharp, Richard Soley. Note that so far we have intentionally just identified a serious problem in the software community, we have not provided any solution. This much harder work will start soon. In the meantime, we have started to make the "SEMAT" initiative much more widely known through an article in well-known publications. If you are interested in following this initiative, please go to our web site and show support by pressing the "sign up" button. Most welcome -- Ivar Jacobson, Bertrand Meyer, Richard Soley