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Why Essence

Free your Agile Practices!

The value propositions derived from the usage of Essence and the agile practice-based approach are endless.  The more you absorb it, the more it pays back. If you are reading this, you are probably looking for a better way to handle the challenges of modern product development.  Essence will give you an actionable thinking framework to future-proof your development capability.  We have tried to capture some of the key values in the sections below. Enjoy and get started with Essence today!

The Case for Essence

The most successful agile teams, are the ones that have the freedom to determine how they work…

Agree?

An agile method war has been raging for 50 years. We want peace and the freedom to choose the practices we need…

Agree?

The software industry, with more than 25 million workers, should behave more like an engineering discipline than like a craft…

Agree?

More Productive Agile Teams through Essence

Developing technical solutions is hard work. To make things easier, a number of practices and frameworks have become popular. They provide structure and guidance to help teams develop their solutions more successfully; things like Scrum, Kanban, User Stories and Test Driven Development.

However, doing these things well is also hard work. Despite in-depth training, books, conferences and certificates, people still struggle to apply these practices well

Essence Agile Productivity Starter Pack image

Better Governance through Essence

The purpose of governance is to provide confidence that expensive development projects are progressing at a satisfactory pace and will deliver the required outcomes at the required quality.

They are often applied at a ‘whole organization’ level, with all teams required to report into them in the same way. They frequently evolve from traditional, linear project management processes, often with checkpoints, gateways, milestones and compliance documents. Which is fine if you believe that the solutions being delivered are relatively stable and unlikely to change. However, what if that’s not the case?

Improving Governance with Essence Team Gameplay Image

Better Quality Products Through Essence

The word Quality is commonly used in software development, but it isn’t always clear what is meant by it. Teams create Definitions of Done, configure thresholds in their CI/CD pipeline, write performance tests and agree service level agreements, but are these sufficient for the level of Quality the customer expects?
There are formal Quality assessments and standards, but these are often regarded as unnecessary for Agile teams – a source of excess documentation and process that is at odds with the Agile Manifesto. Yet

Essence Progress Check Game images

Sound good? Want to get started?

Ultimately, anyone can just get started with Essence! It is a free-to-use industry standard available from the Object Management Group (OMG) Standards Development Organization.  Starting from the Essence specification itself however is unnecessary. At Ivar Jacobson International we have done masses of work to accelerate your take up and adoption of the ideas.  We have all sorts of assets ready to go; essentialized practices, serious gameplay, coaching, consulting and productivity tools to get you going fast.  We have assembled a set of Essence based tools and services in our Essence Starter-Pack to help you get going.

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