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The essentials of modern software engineering : free the practices from the method prisons!
Jacobson I., Lawson H., Ng P., McMahon P., Goedicke M., Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan & Claypool, New York, NY, 2019. 401 pp. Type: Book
Date Reviewed: Oct 14 2019

This introductory software engineering textbook differs from others in that it does not focus on one particular methodology. Instead, the book focuses on identifying the essence of software engineering, a meta-model that allows the reader to model software engineering methods and practices and compare them in a meaningful way.

Essence helps to identify the fundamental abstractions in software engineering and helps students design and build complete projects from scratch or join an existing project and contribute in meaningful ways. The book does not attempt to cover all the existing process models, or even cover any one of them in depth, but rather identifies what is needed and necessary from the existing models, thereby distilling the essence of software engineering.

The book is broken into four parts. Part 1 (eight chapters) covers the essence of software engineering. It introduces the fact that programming is not software engineering; rather, software engineering employs various methods and practices. It then introduces the concept of essence and reinforces that software engineering is about delivering value to customers through the delivery of a solution. To achieve this, a set of activities is followed.

Part 2 (four chapters) examines the use of essence in software development. It addresses the way a software development team needs to think and work with essence and how essence helps adapt the team’s way of working. Using essence to monitor progress and the health of the project is also covered, as well as a mechanism to deal with anomalies.

Part 3 (six chapters) further eases the reader into using essence by focusing on small-scale development, using appropriate practices such as Scrum and use cases. These chapters introduce the basics of the considered practices and explore the way in which essence supports the practice.

Part 4 (five chapters) examines large-scale, complex environments and focuses on scaling from software engineering “in the small” to software engineering “in the large.” It reinforces the value of using essence and emphasizes that software engineering is not just about coding; it includes many components, such as communication, teamwork, identifying deliverables and checkpoints, and building reusable architectures.

This excellent book will help students transition from programming to becoming software engineers. However, there are few supporting materials (slides, sample tests, homework exercises, and so on) to support its use as a textbook in a class. Some students would also benefit from more work examples, covered in more depth, to highlight the value of essence in multiple contexts.

Reviewer:  Michael Oudshoorn Review #: CR146731 (1912-0413)
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