knowledge. Mandating a one-size-fits-all process for all projects does not support the need for continual learning and adaptation, however, and suppresses craftsmanship and creativity.

The move from craft to engineering requires first freeing the practices, presenting them in an accessible, reusable way that allows engineers confidently and predictably to select the right engineering practices for their context and the problems they are trying to solve.

 

Essence: A Hope for a Better Future Software development is a multidimensional endeavor—where human ingenuity meets human need meets collective endeavor meets codified knowledge— that would benefit from the judicious application of engineering practices. The path from craft to engineering progresses—from ad hoc practice to codified professional engineering practices—through scientific learning.

The key to this transformation is the ability to readily capture, share, and improve the practices.

Essence is a simple intuitive language and kernel of foundational elements for the capture, description, and assembly of practices and methods. Work on Essence has been going on for more than 10 years—for the last six years within the SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory) community—resulting in a new international standard, adopted by OMG ( Object Management Group) in 2014.5 It goes beyond just providing syntax and notation for describing practices to establishing a solid common ground—a kernel—that enables teams to:

˲ Describe their practices on top of a universal, shared kernel.

˲ Easily share, adapt, and plug and play with their practices to create the innovative ways of working they need to excel and continuously improve.

˲ Understand and visualize the progress and health of their endeavors, regardless of their way of working.

Essence has several roles to play in the move from craft to engineering: It is helping to achieve the right balance in software engineering endeavors; helping to codify and capture engineering practices; and acting as the basis for a new kind of engineering community.

The use of Essence alone won’t
turn craftspeople into engineers, but
its adoption will help an organization
make this important transition and,
moreover, help the industry prepare
for the future.
Balancing progress and health. Es-
sence provides a kernel of elements
that establishes a common ground for
carrying out software engineering en-
deavors. This can be used in a number
of ways to increase the effectiveness of
software engineering teams.
Actively monitoring the health of an
endeavor. The kernel defines seven
aspects of concern for any software
engineering endeavor: opportunity,
stakeholders, requirements, team,
work, way of working, and the soft-
ware system itself. For each of these
elements Essence defines a series
of states, with checklists, represent-
ing healthy progress. As shown in
Figure 1, these can be used to create
practice-independent health moni-
tors that can be used to check that
the endeavor is on course and pro-
ceeding in a healthy manner. On the
top, the radar chart (an interactive,
online version complete with check-
lists is available1) represents progress
as growth from the center; and on the
bottom, on the milestone map (avail-
able from the App Store as the Alpha
State Explorer app by Ivar Jacobson
International), all the states are laid
out in order from top to bottom,
with achieved states shown filled
in. The second example also shows
the checklist used to confirm the
achievement of the Software System
Demonstrable state.
The kernel can also be used to create
lightweight governance and compli-
ance practices to help ensure the team
achieves the required level of engineer-
ing rigor. By basing the governance
and compliance on the kernel itself,
this can be achieved in a practice-inde-
pendent fashion allowing the teams to
safely innovate and own their own ways
of working. Figure 2 shows the four dif-
ferent governance life cycles that were
at the heart of Munich Re Essentials,
the modern practice-based software
development method created by Mu-
nich Reinsurance. 4 The four life cycles
are Exploratory, Feature Growth, Main-
tenance, and Support, and the check-
points (milestones) of each life cycle
are defined by the states to be achieved
for each alpha.

Assessing the effectiveness of methods. Essence at its roots gives a detailed definition of software engineering. In the search for a GTSE (general theory of software engineering), 6 several researchers use Essence as such a definition, and more is expected to come out of this work. A key aspect provid-

Figure 3. Simple Essence-based activity map.

Cu sto m e r So lu ti on E n d ea vou r

Explore
Possibilities
Ensure Stakeholder
Satisfaction
Shape the
System
Implement
the System
Test the
System
Deploy the
System
Use the System
Operate
the System
Stakeholder Needs
Prepare to
do the Work
Coordinate
Activity
Support
the Team
Stop the
Work
Progress
Requirements