Software Development Kernel

The heart of your lightweight software development process.

Use the software development kernel to understand where you are and which practices you need.
This practice allows teams to:
Understand where they are and what they have achieved.
Evaluate their current practices.
Start with a minimal amount of process and add the practices they need as and when they need them.
Apply as few or as many practices as they need.
Easily capture their practices in a reusable and extendable way.

Things to Produce

Things to Do
The team faces a number of challenges in each of the process areas. These are called
Activity Spaces and they serve as slots for the practices to plug activities into.

The kernel defines the essentials things that any software project should pay attention
to. We call them Alphas and they group into three distinct areas of concern:
Customer area (green) - the team gains an understanding of the opportunity to be
addressed.
Solution area (yellow) - the team establishes a shared understanding of the
solution, implements an appropriate solution, then builds and tests it.
Endeavor area (blue) - the team needs to plan, co-ordinate and monitor the work
to be done and the risks affecting their ability to do the work.
In the customer area the team supports and involves customers and other project
stakeholders.

Key Competencies
Competencies and skills are required in each area of the process. The diagram below
shows the five core competencies defined in the kernel.

In the solution area the team develops an appropriate solution to exploit the opportunity and satisfy the customers needs.

The team needs to possess skills in these competencies depending on the nature of
the project and the practices.

In the endeavor area the team sets up and manages the project and control the
backlog.

Patterns
Practices contribute various patterns to describe certain techniques or ways of
performing some specific piece of work. The Kernel offers Pattern Spaces as slots for
these patterns to plug into.

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