Abstract
The Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) initiative seeks to develop a rigorous, theoretically sound basis for software engineering methods. In contrast to previous software engineering method frameworks that rely on separate method engineers, the primary target of SEMAT are practitioners. The goal is to give software development teams the opportunity to themselves define, refine and customize the methods and processes they use in software development. To achieve this goal SEMAT proposes a new practitioner-oriented language for software engineering methods that is focused, small, extensible and provides formally defined provides formally defined behaviour to support the conduct of a software engineering endeavour. This paper presents and discusses how the proposed language supports an agile creation and enactment of software engineering methods. The SEMAT approach is illustrated by modelling parts of the Scrum project management practice.
