Essence

The Industrial Internet Consortium predicts the IoT (Internet of Things) will become the third technological revolution after the Industrial Revolution and the Internet Revolution. Its impact across all industries and businesses can hardly be imagined. Existing software (business, telecom, aerospace, defense, etc.) is expected to be modified or redesigned, and a huge amount of new software, solving new problems, will have to be developed. As a consequence, the software industry should welcome new and better methods. This article makes the case that to be a major player in this space you will need a multitude of methods, not just a single one. Existing popular approaches such as Scrum and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) may be part of the future, but you will also need many new methods and practices—some of which aren’t even known today. Extending a single method to incorporate all that is needed would result in something that is way too big and unwieldy. Instead, the new OMG (Object Management Group) standard Essence can be used to describe modular practices that can be composed together to form a multitude of methods, not only to provide for all of today’s needs, but also to be prepared for whatever the future may bring.

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