Essence for Agility

Essence for Agility is a community which we started at the beginning of this year 2021 and which has got significant interest among people interested in agile ways of working. We organize meetups and you can find us here.

The meetups are recorded and a recording will normally be available within one week after the event.

Jan 6, 2021: ”Essence for Agility launches with two software and agile giants” with Jeff Sutherland and Ivar Jacobson.

For our inauguration, we’ll host Dr Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum, and Dr Ivar Jacobson, co-creator of Essence and a leader of the community behind Essence; both of these individuals have independently had a massive impact on the software industry and, in this rare opportunity, we will hear about where the idea of Essence and Scrum came from, what problems they are solving, and what role they are playing in the world of Agile today.

Recording: https://vimeo.com/499589189

Jan 26, 2021: “Scrum and Scrum@Scale better with Essence” with Jeff Sutherland and Ian Spence.

Dr Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum, and Ian Spence at Ivar Jacobson International, co-creator of Essence, have worked to create Scrum Essentials and Scrum@Scale Essentials which utilise the Essence standards to create simple, card-based interactive aides for use in the learning, adoption, practice and application of the Scrum and Scrum@Scale Guides.

In this event, we’ll briefly introduce the practices and spark a fascinating discussion on what makes them so helpful, or as Jeff says, “Essence is the key to success”.?

Recording: https://vimeo.com/506013107

March 10, 2021: “Essence in Education” with Pekka Abrahamsson, Jan-Phillip Stegh?fer and Emanuel Grant.

Just as agile is taught to leaders, teams, and organisations, so too is it taught to the next generation of engineers and technology leaders. Increasingly, Essence is being used as a medium to deliver agile teachings in education as it accommodates varied learning styles and aides in the decomposition of methods to their common grounds, making them easier to be understood.

In this panel discussion we are joined by 3 esteemed professors who will share their unique experiences of applying Essence in their classes to teach agile and explore how the same principles can be used to teach agile to teams, leaders, and organisations.

Join us to learn:

- How Essence is applied to educate the next generation of engineering and technology leaders

- How Essence can educate your leaders and teams on agile practices

Recording: https://vimeo.com/523847190

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April 7, 2021: “Impediments for wide adoption of agile methods - what can we as an industry do?” with Scott Ambler, Kent Beck and Ivar Jacobson.

We'll be sitting down with Scott Ambler, Ivar Jacobson, and Kent Beck to discuss the impediments that agile methods are facing for wider adoption, and what we as a wider community and industry can do to help overcome these impediments.

Scott, Ivar, and Kent will each present one major impediment that they feel strongly about. The group will debate each one to explore the problem space before proposing solutions we as a community can take to address it. The audience will also be invited to participate in discussing each impediment.

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uMzUx5v2mY

May 11, 2021: "Architecture in Agile Methods" with Grady Booch, Murat Erder and Stefan Malich, https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/277663192/

Over the 20 years that Agile has been adopted, the attitude to architecture has been swinging from being outdated and ridiculed to being something you can talk about with respect. It was considered outdated, a relic of old-fashioned bad methods with an architect culture of big upfront design. It was replaced by working software achieved by what in simplified form could be described as “Just code, refactor later”. Today, some popular methods advocate a balanced approach to architecture, modeling and refactoring with an agile spin on it. Others are still reluctant to any form of upfront design.

This MeetUp attempts to illuminate the situation, and the speakers will share their own personal experience.

Recording: https://youtu.be/NdeFHaq-2uE?t=1

June 9, 2021: "Experience from Essence usage in the Industry" with Burkhard Perkens-Golomb from Munich-Re, André Wilke from Hapag-Lloyd and Johan Granstrom, from Dfinity. https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/278097406/.

The Essence standard is gaining more and more interest. Books, papers, blogs and similar as well as presentations, videos, slides are published on it and its many use cases. The academic community has formed an Essence Education Forum with the mission to facilitate education and research related to Essence. Method creators are adopting it to make their methods and frameworks better. In the software industry Essence is adopted across the world.

This event will present the application of Essence in three international companies: Hapag-Lloyd - a huge shipping company operating around the world, Munich-Re - a huge insurance company with strong needs of governance and security, and Dfinity - a “cool” young company building an Internet Computer (the whole internet becomes a computer).

Recording: https://youtu.be/2B5qG3WeaIA

July 28, 2021: "Crazy Challenges working with Methods and Frameworks" with Joakim Sundén, co-founder of the Spotify Model, Scott Ambler, founder of Disciplined Agile and Ivar Jacobson, former method guru. https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/278917968/.

If you think about our industry as a whole, working with Methods is a little crazy. Here’s some of the craziest things that this panel discussion will explore:

- We are in a methods war for more than 50 years

- Practices are locked in method prisons

- Method prisons are controlled by gurus

- Methods have a lot in common, but there is no common ground

- Methods are theory only; they have poor support for putting them into practice: the Achilles’ Heel of method adoptions.

As an industry, do we think this is right? Should we do something about it?

In this exciting discussion, we’ll hear what 3 seasoned veterans think about this - including one who is a method guru himself!

- Ivar Jacobson, who once was a method guru

- Scott Ambler, the creator of Disciplined Agile

- Joakim Sundén, the co-creator of the Spotify Model

This event was inspired by a recent article by Dr Ivar Jacobson:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/some-craziest-things-working-methods-frameworks-ivar-jacobson/

If you are interested in participating in discussing crazy things in working with methods and frameworks, welcome to join the LinkedIn group https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/12544857/. Really worth working for.

Recording: https://youtu.be/X-bupri2GBY

Sep 20, 2021: "The Future of Methods – not just Tomorrow but also the Day after Tomorrow". https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/280316615/

We are privileged to have an exceptional panel join us to discuss what the future may hold for methods and frameworks.

We’ll explore the methods of tomorrow, or perhaps a world free from a methods war? Will we continue to be led by gurus or will experts help us so we can self-organise to create our own methods?

Join us to hear from:

- Robert “uncle Bob” Martin – ‘clean code’ instigator a proponent of software craftsmanship

- Prof. Bertrand Meyer – grand computer science and software engineering academic and industrialist

- Prof. Carlos Zapata – software engineer and futurist with a crystal ball.

Each participant will present their hypothesis of what the future of methods may be for the panel to debate one by one. We will also invite the audience to participate with their thoughts and ideas.

Recording: https://youtu.be/SSHyzdxst8s

Oct 12, 2021: "The Why, How and What of Essence". https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/280902184

The Essence for Agility MeetUp has been active since Jan 6 2021. During this time we have got many questions over these months on Essence, such as What is it? What Crazy Things does it address? What other, not so crazy problems does it solve? What Tools are available.

Essence is not a method competing with methods such as SAFe, S@S, Spotify Model, etc. It is a platform, or better a common ground for all methods, adopted by OMG as a standard and used to make any method better…as for instance Jeff Sutherland has experienced with Scrum.

On the way to the future we already have passed a few stations, and many companies in the industry, many university teachers in the academia and some famous methodologists are already fully on board. This meetup will give you an up to date presentation of the why, how and what. This meetup is not looking for a debate. Instead, we will give the audience a wholistic picture of Essence and its value proposition. The presenters this time are Ivar Jacobson and Graham Marsh from the same company Ivar Jacobson International.

Recording: https://youtu.be/_uhYwrd5CKQ

Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J-NrRLdLSrcfadO_v00g4ZHDsXYByE5x/view?usp=sharing

Nov 16, 2021: ”Use Cases or User Stories ... or Both?” with Mike Cohn, Ian Spence and Bernie Clark.

Use Cases and User Stories are two of the most popular practices with agile teams. They both take a user perspective when looking at the requirements and they both work as test items. They have both inspired one another and over the years they've evolved to now be closer than ever.

We're thrilled to host a very special guest who has contributed much to the agile community - Mike Cohn! He has played a seminal role in creating and developing the user story idea.

In the panel discussion with Mike will be accompanied by:

- Ian Spence, who has worked with Dr. Ivar Jacobson, the creator of use-cases, for more than 15 years and developed the use case idea to be a perfect practice for SAFe

- Bernie Clark, who has much experience in successfully applying use cases with user stories in big banks.

And Ivar will also be there, maybe he will say something as well.

With such an incredible lineup this event promises to be insightful, constructive and fun - perhaps with a few surprises!

Recording: https://youtu.be/lwVo8G_5li4

Feb 16, 2022: ”Essence and Heart of Agile - Piezes of the Puzzle?” with Soledad Pinter, Paul McMahon and Ivar Jacobson.

A dream meetup attempting to explain two interesting approaches and their relationships. Can they strengthen one another? Any opportunities for integrations? Or just friendly partners?

Essence and Heart of Agile have been around for a while now. Both have attracted large communities which feel these approaches will dramatically impact how we solve the problems we face in business and agility today. Both are fundamentally different to today's most popular scaling approaches but perfect partners to them.

They have differences between themselves, but also similarities, and this event will not only explore each approach but answer the question, can they strengthen one another? Are they pieces of the same puzzle?

Join us to hear from Essence and Heart of Agile veterans who will share stories of how they use these approaches in their client work and if there is an opportunity for them to strengthen one another.

Soledad Pinter - Heart of Agile expert, Agile Coach & Trainer

Paul McMahon – Essence co-developer, Software industry veteran

We will also hear from Dr Ivar Jacobson - Essence co-creator, a Father of Software Engineering. He will contribute both as a co-host and a co-panelist, weighing in with his experience of Essence and Heart of Agile.

Recording: https://youtu.be/jtt6zPIgCnY

Mar 24, 2022: ”The Spotify Model Demystified and Made Applicable” with Joakim Sundén and Stefan Malich.

The Spotify Model is a very loosely defined “framework” for agile at scale.

The canonical “documentation” consists mainly of an outdated white paper which is a snapshot of Spotify’s way of working in 2012 and two videos from 2014 on the engineering culture of Spotify captured mostly by a consultant who says himself that he was “just the messenger”. If you want to learn more than that, you have to wade through a vast amount of presentations and articles, many of them published by Spotify employees saying things like “there is no Spotify model”, “don’t copy the Spotify model” and “you can do better than the Spotify model”. In spite of the scarcity of even semi-official descriptions and the many cautionary tales, “the Spotify model” continues to appeal to many organizations and it has been adopted in one way or the other by thousands of organizations.

However, what is the Spotify model really all about? What are the essentials of the Spotify model? Is there really something like “the” Spotify model?

This Essence for Agility meetup event will present “Spotify Essentials”, which is the Spotify Model described using Essence as a platform. Spotify Essentials demystifies the Spotify model and fills the gaps to make it more applicable and practical.

You will meet:

- Joakim Sundén – co-creator of the Spotify Model

- Dr. Stefan Malich – founder of Architectural Change Management & Essence Certified Practitioner

Furthermore, there will be special announcements related to Spotify Essentials during the event.

Recording: https://youtu.be/n17YuRZct90

April 26, 2022: ”Essence Exploration: Teams” with Simon Girvan

This session will explore how Essence can help teams improve how they deliver. It will show how gameplay leads to greater creativity and innovation; how the Essence kernel helps generate focused insights on where to improve; how Essentializing a practice can help your teams learn it better; and how Essence can enable both organizational compliance and team autonomy.

This event is the first in our theme of exploring the many use cases of Essence. Essence is not another method (framework). Instead, it is designed to make any method significantly better. Essence is best described in the context of its use cases, but, since these are so many, it is a big task to describe Essence. Thus, we will describe Essence one use case and one meetup at a time.

Register here: https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/284824047/

Recording: https://youtu.be/4blO2oYff08

June 29, 2022: ”New Dogs, Old Tricks” with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Steve Freeman and Joseph Pelrine.

While a love of or enthusiasm about new things is part of human nature, the rampant neophilia (a strong affinity for novelty) that grips the agile industry, media, and younger generations, often causes them to reject all that has been learnt in the past, to "throw the baby out with the bathwater". Practices that were once regarded as essential are now forgotten, and lessons learned have become lessons lost.

We often see all that came before 1995 as “waterfall” and practices from methods such as eXtreme Programming as being old-fashioned and no longer of use. An attitude that all too often proves Santayana's statement that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Perhaps it’s time to step back and reflect. In this meetup, we will explore our agile past to help the agilists of today create the agile of tomorrow.

You will meet:

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is best known as the design geek who invented Responsibility-Driven Design and the xDriven meme (think TDD, BDD, DDD..). She's keen on discovering and sharing heuristics, patterns, and practices for reducing risk and sustaining ongoing agile development.

Steve Freeman was a pioneer of the Agile movement in the UK and a co-chair of the first London XpDay. He’s co-author of Growing Object-Oriented Software, a standard text on iterative software development. Steve spends most of his time helping teams to deliver better, and still likes to code.

Joseph Pelrine is an experienced psychologist and Agilist with an excellent track record in helping companies improve by optimizing the way they work.

Register here: https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/events/286031308/

Recording: https://youtu.be/DqW4X9YdOns

Oct 5, 2022: ”Navigating the Agile Development Landscape” with Gabrielle Benefield,?Dave Farley,?Jeff Patton and Ian Spence

Even if your organization has committed to an Agile approach, there are still many choices to make.

There are so many practices and techniques to choose from:

Customer Journey, Value Stream, Use Cases, BizOps, Story Maps, User Stories, Use Case Slices, Feature-Driven, Behavior-Driven, Test-Driven, Use Case-Driven, Scrum, MobiusLoop, Scaled Agile approaches, Team Topologies, DevOps, to name just a few.

Some of these each uniquely address a specific aspect of the development lifecycle (not just software). Others may overlap or compete head-to-head, while some complement each other seamlessly.

An additional challenge is that these specialized approaches, though tremendously valuable, have rarely been created with other practices in mind.

How do you choose?

How do you integrate these seemingly isolated islands of practice?

Join us for this panel discussion, where we will consider the key aspects of supporting a product development lifecycle, from Idea to Implementation, to determine what you really need and which practices satisfy those needs.

We'll talk about pros and cons, what works with what and, crucially, how to build the bridges to create an integrated suite of practices for navigating your own landscape.

You will meet:

• Gabrielle Benefield,?creator of the Mobius Loop
• Dave Farley,?CI/CD, DevOps , Automated Testing, Building Better SW Faster
• Jeff Patton,?creator of the Story Maps
• Ian Spence,?ISAgile, co-creator of Essence at Ivar Jacobson International.

Recording: https://youtu.be/MVszwP9QffQ.

Oct 25, 2022: ”Navigating the Agile Development Landscape with Essence” with Simon Girvan and more.

In our last Meetup we had a fruitful discussion about the variety of Agile Practices that teams can consider when navigating the agile development landscape.

We learned that there are not only challenges in deciding which practices to use, but also in determining how those practices can be successfully combined into a cohesive development approach.

It is clear that the old adage of 'One size does not fit all' holds true not just for each company, but also for each specific Endeavor. Yet still, many teams try to apply the same development approach every time, with predictably variable results.

Join us in this Meetup where we will discuss how your teams can use Essence to define an integrated suite of practices that addresses the unique demands of your organization and specific development efforts.

You will learn how teams can use collaboration techniques to arrive at the appropriate ways of working that don't overlook the essentials and aren't overburdened by prescriptive proprietary practices that do not necessarily add value in your environment. Whether you are starting a new team or have already begun, you will be able to go back to your teams tomorrow and help them find ways they can improve how they work.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

· Simon Girvan

· more speakers to be announced soon