ESSENCE2 — Make the discussion of What is a Kernel present tense and more active.

Issues

The following text may need refinement, uses the passive voice, and uses the past tense.

• https://issues.omg.org/browse/ESSENCE2-2 - Passive Voice
• https://issues.omg.org/browse/ESSENCE2-3 - Present Tense
• https://issues.omg.org/browse/ESSENCE2-5 - Streamline text

Original Text

The kernel is described using a small subset of the Language defined in Clause 9 Language Specification. It is organized into three areas of concern, each containing a small number of:

• Alphas - representations of the essential things to work with. The Alphas provide descriptions of the kind of things that a team will manage, produce, and use in the process of developing, maintaining, and supporting systems and, as such, are relevant to assessing the progress and health of an engineeringendeavor. They also act as the anchor for any additional sub-alphas and work products required by the engineering practices.
• Activity Spaces - representations of the essential things to do. The Activity Spaces provide descriptions of the challenges a team faces when developing, maintaining, and supporting systems, and the kinds of things that the team will do to meet them.
• Competencies - representations of the key capabilities required to carry out the work of engineering.

To maintain its practice independence the kernel does not include any instances of the other language elements such as work products or activities. These only make sense within the context of a specific practice.
The best way to get an overview of the kernel as a whole is to look at the full set of Alphas and Activity Spaces and how they are related

Suggestion

The kernel description uses a small subset of the Language defined in Clause 9 Language Specification. It is organized into three areas of concern, each containing a small number of:

• Alphas: Representations are the essential things involved in the work. Alphas describe what a team manages, produces, and uses in developing, maintaining, and supporting systems. They are relevant for assessing the progress and health of an engineering endeavor and act as anchors for any additional sub-alphas and work products required by engineering practices.
• Activity Spaces: Representations of the essential things to do. Activity Spaces describe the challenges a team faces when developing, maintaining, and supporting systems and the kinds of activities undertaken to meet these challenges.
• Competencies: Representations of the key capabilities for engineering work.

To maintain its practice independence, the kernel does not include any instances of other language elements, such as work products or activities. These elements only make sense within the context of a specific practice.
To get an overview of the kernel, examine the full set of Alphas and Activity Spaces and understand their relationships.

Close

Generic writing guidelines are not necessarily applicable to the writing of specification documents. Nor does the seeming violation of such guidelines necessarily mean that any specific text is unclear as already written. All text in the specification was reviewed and adopted as is with specific technical interpretation. Any changes to the text for purely stylistic reasons must therefore be done with extreme care, followed by a full review, to ensure that such changes do not alter the interpretation of the text as it was adopted. This would require a considerable level of effort for a possible minor gain in presentation, which itself is likely to be subjective. Therefore, the FTF has chosen not to make such changes to the text for purely stylistic reasons.