Everything is possible to structure, even the software engineering body of knowledge. In this paper, we suggest a conceptual model of the software engineering body of knowledge. The model is a restructured version of SWEBOK and ACM/IEEE Curriculum Guidelines. It constitutes the first attempt to create an underlying structure that is common to most of the software engineering bodies of knowledge.

Success of software developers should be attributed to developers' knowledge of what to do and their discipline and trust to their self-organization. To achieve this, the software community should provide appropriate process frameworks recommending developers what needs to be done, still however, allowing maximal freedom, flexibility and self-discipline. The Self-Governance Software Developer (SGD) Framework is the solution to this. In this paper, we suggest and motivate the SGD Framework. We also benchamark it against Personal Software Process (PSP). Our results show that SGD has a higher coverage of the developer activities. Still, however, it needs to be evaluated within the industrial context.

Despite substantial amount of research in software process improvement (SPI) and a wide variety of SPI approaches and software process maturity models, many of the SPI initiatives still fail. This is mainly because the improvement projects are found to be far more complex than expected from the beginning. They embrace a myriad of various organizational, managerial, process, and social properties that need to be considered, such as clear directions, full commitment, continuous sponsorship, and dedicated resources. Some of those properties have been already widely known within SPI arena while others have not yet been recognized. This paper identifies the properties that need to be fulfilled for making SPI projects successful and puts them into an SPI Checklist to be used in the assessment of SPI projects. It then reports on its pilot evaluation within 10 SPI projects at Rolls Royce. The evaluation results show a strong relationship between the fulfillment of the checklist items by the projects studied and the success rates of those projects. Thereby, the results provide a strong proof of concept demonstrating that the success of SPI projects is no accident but a foreseeable outcome of clearly identified and assessable characteristics.

Today, it is practically impossible to provide a complete undergraduate education within software engineering, not only because of its breath and depth but also due to its complexity, intricate nature and huge competition from other curriculum subjects. In this paper, we suggest a half-day tutorial providing one angle of teaching software engineering and tackling the incompleteness problem. The tutorial is based on the ESSENCE Kernel, a recently accepted OMG standard. The Kernel covers the domain of software engineering in a minimalistic way. It includes specifications of the essential things that must be considered for assuring the progress and health of every software engineering endeavor. Hence, it provides a good basis for embracing the whole software engineering domain in a simple yet fully covering manner.

Literature shows that as many as 82% of the organizations that adopt agile methods experience problems in their agile adoptions. Despite this, very few reports have provided guidelines for how to conduct software method adoption. This paper suggests a process model of software method adoption and lists contextual factors for guiding the deployment of software development methods. The adoption model and the contextual factors have been evaluated in six industrial method adoption projects and they have proven to be useful for guiding organizations in their software method adoption efforts.

Most academic disciplines emphasize the importance of their general theories. Examples of well-known general theories include the Big Bang theory, Maxwell's equations, the theory of the cell, the theory of evolution, and the theory of demand and supply. Less known to the wider audience, but established within their respective fields, are theories with names such as the general theory of crime and the theory of marriage. Few general theories of software engineering have, however, been proposed, and none have achieved significant recognition. This workshop, organized by the SEMAT initiative, aims to provide a forum for discussing the concept of a general theory of software engineering. The topics considered include the benefits, the desired qualities, the core components and the form of a such a theory.

The scope of software engineering has become enormous and impossible to teach it in its entirety. Hence, educational programs should focus on a subset of its body of knowledge. In this paper, we suggest Reuse and Progress Driven Software Engineering Educational Method (RaPSEEM). The method aids in organizing the software engineering body of knowledge when designing specific software engineering programs.