Publications

To be agile as teams, we need to adjust our approach to meet our immediate challenges and needs. To be agile as an organization, we need to learn collectively and evolve our approach over time to support our evolving mission, so that we continue to excel in an ever-changing environment. We would not call a TV set “adaptive” if, in order to adjust the volume, we had to throw it away and replace it with a model with a different volume setting. So why are we prepared to accept process frameworks that leave us in a similar predicament every time we want to improve our product development performance as an organization?

A modularized set of interchangeable practices that enable organizations to scale agile smoothly as part of a tailored transformation program that delivers value early and often, and builds a flexible and long-lasting library of practices, able to flex and grow over time in response to changing technology and business challenges.

The Agile Essentials practices provide a basic starter kit toolbox that covers all the common and critical aspects of team-based development. Each practice contains a small number of cards that provide useful, structured advice on how to successfully adopt and apply each practice.

A new, cutting-edge approach can help you harness the principles of disparate software methodologies to accelerate adoption and deliver value. Essence, a modular standard created by the Object Management Group and promulgated by SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory), provides a method-agnostic, common language for re-using software practices. Companies using Essence have seen dramatic cost-savings, process improvements and even new business creation.  Essence enables configuration of the 17 best-known agile methodologies in the market into smaller, foundational atomic “bricks” of re-usable practices. Currently the CA Technologies stack (CA PPM, Agile Central, CDM, Release Automation and Service Virtualization) is one of the unique environments that support all of these re-usable bricks of Agile practices.

Essence  Agility is instrumental in moving software development toward a true engineering discipline.

The IoT with its expected huge number of products will need a multitude of methods. Mandating a one-size-fits-all method was an old dream that never worked in practice. 60 years of having monolithic methods in system development is also enough. Let’s break their tyranny using smarter Essence-based methods.

"I am excited about working with industry partners at SEMAT and leveraging the ESSENCE standard", said Scott Ambler in a recent phone interview, " in order to not just have different types of re-usable domain content built up for use as accelerators in Disciplined Agile Delivery projects, but also to clearly guide the industry on the benefits of specific granular practices that are currently uniquely only present within the Disciplined Agile Delivery method.”

Key takeaways in article: *What issues can SEMAT help address within an organisation. *What is the best way to train people in the use of SEMAT so that its understood and used. *Why are the SEMAT cards important? *How can SEMAT be applied to the Enterprise, Programmes and Projects. *How can the use of SEMAT be scaled out across your organisation.

An agile way of working spread to 5,000 practitioners within two years by using an Essence-based Practice Architecture A sustainable path to agility was created - teams could incrementally improve their way of working and growing Practices provided standardization which helped practitioners share and learn best practices

Industrial-­scale agile requires much more than just being able to scale agile. It also means taking a disciplined approach to ensuring that our IT investments are resulting in sustainable benefits for both the producing organization and its customers. This involves adopting a different approach to many aspects of agility. We need to look beyond small-­scale agile, beyond independent competitive islands of agile excellence, beyond individual craftsmanship and heroic teams, and beyond the short-­term, instant gratification that seems to be the focus of many well-­intentioned but self-­centered agile teams. It is this adoption of a more holistic approach that we call moving from craft to engineering. This paper is published at acm.org.