Education to Agile: Fostering Team Awareness with Essence

This paper explores the incorporation of Agile practices in our undergraduate courses leveraging the Essence approach, a meta-notation for describing software processes, roles, and best practices. Exposing students and young developers to the Agile mindset and related methods is important to let them to cope with the challenges of modern software development and digital transformations. Agile methods and practices can also help students to develop valuable soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and adaptability. Essence clarifies and guides several key Agile practices, thanks to guidelines and checklists, such as: team building, customization of Agile ceremonies, promoting the effectiveness of retrospectives, tool selection and configuration. We found that the usage of Essence helps students to develop critical thinking and a sense of ownership and responsibility related to their teamwork. They achieve a better understanding of what is expected of them, and, as a result, they are more motivated to achieve their goals.