Essence: Team-Based Software Innovation
Ivan Aaen · VBN Forskningsportal (Aalborg Universitet) · 2012
Essence is a methodology supporting innovative software teams. It is designed with agile development in mind to allow for the problem situation to talk back to the team as they go along building solutions. Traditional software development teams – and for that matter probably also development teams using technologies other than software – might also enjoy adapting Essence to suit their situation. Essence is not yet another method for generating ideas. There are plenty of good methods already, and for that reason I choose to focus less on idea generation and more on the thereafter. Most teams are good at coming up with ideas, and the biggest challenge is often to select, mature and put good ideas into practice. Essence therefore focus on combining individual ideas into solutions, and on maturing our understanding of both the challenges and the many ways in which these challenges can be met. Essence is based on the idea that challenges are open to interpretation and choice. We may often choose how we understand a challenge and choose among several strategies for answering it. Software development and indeed software innovation are far from linear. Essence is built on structures rather than processes. There are three main structures in Essence: • Views • Roles • Visions