ER — SEMANTIC DISCIPLINE ISSUE

SEMANTIC DISCIPLINE ISSUE
1.The three concerns of Customer, Solution, and Endeavor are permitted to progress independently.
2. Page 4 Areas of Concern, "Elements in kernels or practices may be divided into a collection of main areas of concern that a software engineering endeavor has to pay special attention to. All elements fall into at most one of these."
3. However, the OMG Essence Standard employs "Solution", one of three concerns, in the Customer concern Opportunity alpha "Solution Needed" state.
4. The result is the use of the word "Solution" in both the name of a concern and in the separate concern of Opportunity as an alpha state "Solution Needed."

ACTION: Since software is known to be the domain of consideration in Opportunity, the "Solution Needed" state in the alpha Opportunity should be be relabeled "Software Needed", thereby eliminating this semantic intrusion of concern terminology into alpha state of a different concern. Suggest that the revised OMG Essence standard adopt this change.

Close, no change

Currently, the specificity of the Essence kernel to "software" is captured almost entirely within the Solution domain – or, more accurately, the specificity is to "software system", which may also include the hardware the supports the software. The alphas in the Customer and Endeavor areas of concern can and should largely apply to cases where the solution may not be a software system. While the current standard kernel focus on software-system solutions, the intent is that it be customizable for use with other solution areas – and, in fact, some groups have actually done this.

Further, from a Customer point of view it makes more sense to talk about whether a solution is needed than whether that solution is specifically a "software system" or even a "system". The focus should be on the value of the solution needed, not on what the solution "is". It was with this in mind that the term "solution" was specifically used in the name of the state "Solution Needed" when Essence was developed.