[Paper Review] Essencery - A Tool for Essentializing Software Engineering Practices

Arthur Evensen, Kai‐Kristian Kemell+3 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Aug 8, 2018

Software Engineering Techniques and Practices12 references3 citations

TL;DR

Essencery is a tool that enables software engineering practitioners to essentialize methods and practices using the Essence framework’s graphical syntax, aiming to improve adoption of Essence by providing intuitive, visual modeling support. An empirical evaluation confirms the tool is easy to use and effective for its intended purpose in method essentialization.

ABSTRACT

Software Engineering practitioners work using highly diverse methods and practices, and general theories in software engineering are lacking. One attempt at creating a common ground in the area of software engineering methodologies has been the Essence Theory of Software Engineering, which can be considered a method-agnostic project management tool for software engineering. Essence supports the use of any development practices and provides a framework for building a suitable method for any software engineering context. However, Essence presently suffers from low practitioner adoption that is partially considered to be caused by a lack of proper tooling. In this paper, we present Essencery, a tool for essentializing software engineering methods and practices using the Essence graphical syntax. Essencery aims to facilitate adoption of Essence among potential future users. We present an empirical evaluation of the tool by means of a qualitative, quasi-formal experiment and, based on the experiment, confirm that the tool is easy to use and useful for its intended purpose.

Motivation & Objective

• To address low adoption of the Essence framework in software engineering due to insufficient tooling.
• To develop a tool that supports practitioners in modeling and essentializing software engineering methods using Essence's graphical syntax.
• To facilitate method-agnostic project management by enabling flexible, context-specific software engineering method creation.
• To empirically evaluate the usability and usefulness of the tool in real-world software engineering contexts.

Proposed method

• Essencery implements the Essence framework’s core concepts—such as alpha states, activities, and properties—using a visual, diagrammatic interface.
• The tool allows users to model software engineering practices through a standardized, extensible graphical notation based on Essence.
• It supports the creation of essentialized methods by enabling users to define and structure key elements like goals, activities, and work products.
• The tool integrates with existing development workflows by providing exportable, human- and machine-readable representations of essentialized methods.
• A development sprint was used to iteratively build and refine the tool, with user feedback incorporated throughout.
• The tool was evaluated through a qualitative, quasi-formal experiment involving practitioners to assess usability and usefulness.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 To what extent does Essencery support the essentialization of software engineering practices using the Essence framework’s graphical syntax?
• RQ2 How usable is Essencery for practitioners with varying levels of familiarity with the Essence framework?
• RQ3 How useful is Essencery in supporting the creation of context-specific software engineering methods?
• RQ4 What are the perceived benefits and limitations of using Essencery in real-world software engineering practice?

Key findings

• Essencery successfully enables practitioners to model and essentialize software engineering methods using the Essence framework’s graphical notation.
• The tool was perceived as easy to use, with participants reporting low cognitive load during the essentialization process.
• Participants found the tool useful for structuring and communicating software engineering practices in a standardized, method-agnostic way.
• The qualitative evaluation revealed that Essencery supports the creation of context-specific methods without requiring deep prior knowledge of Essence.
• Feedback indicated that the visual nature of the tool enhanced understanding and collaboration among team members.
• The tool demonstrated potential for improving the adoption of the Essence framework in both academic and industrial settings.