Glossary
A
Acceptance criteria are product characteristics specified in the user story or task that need to be satisfied before they are accepted by the Product Owner or directly by the customer. Acceptance criteria are used as standards to measure and compare the characteristics of the final product with specified parameters.
Agile is a group of iterative and incremental methods originating in software development. It encourages flexibility and speed in responding to change. Agile delivery values and principles are defined in the Agile Manifesto.
Agile Manifesto is a set of values and principles defining Agile software development.
Agile Product Delivery is a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to the customer.
Agile Release Train (ART) in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a long-lived team of Agile teams, which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally develops, delivers, and, where applicable, operates one or more solutions in a value stream.
Agile Release Train (ART) in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) consists of the existing code, components, and technical infrastructure needed to implement near-term features without excessive redesign and delay.
B
Backlog (see product backlog).
Built-in quality practices originate in Lean manufacturing. These proactive quality practices ensure that the solution meets quality expectations upfront.
Burndown chart is a graphical representation of the amount of work completed vs. the elapsed time period. Burndown charts are used to estimate the time needed to complete the project. The vertical axis represents the planned work, and the horizontal axis represents the time. The general trend in the graph is to "burn down" to a zero where no work remains.
Business agility takes Agile outside of software development and refers to the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, customer-centric, and digitally enabled business solutions.
C
Cadence is the approach to achieving commitment and reliability with a system. Sprints of regular duration establish a cadence for a development effort.
Certified Scrum Master (CSM) is the most popular and basic Scrum Master certification from Scrum Alliance, which is perfect for aspiring Scrum Masters.
Continuous delivery means delivering the product or a product feature to its users immediately after it is integrated and tested, without further manual steps.
Continuous improvement – Agile aims to continuously learn and apply lessons learned right away. There are multiple tools and techniques to enable continuous improvement in Agile, including Retrospectives, experience sharing sessions, and many others.
Cross-functional team - A team that has expertise from different fields, for example, designers, developers, and testers who have the skills required to complete the work end to end effectively and efficiently.
Customers are the ultimate beneficiaries of the value provided.
D
Daily Scrum (Daily Standup) is a 15-minute timeboxed Scrum event held each day for the Scrum team. In this meeting, the team plans to work for the next 24 hours. This optimizes team collaboration and performance by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum and forecasting upcoming Sprint work. The Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity.
Definition of Done refers to the criteria of accepting work once it is completed within the required quality standards. These criteria are defined by the entire team in collaboration with the business stakeholders. This includes, by default, delivering potentially releasable software at the end of every iteration.
Definition of Ready refers to a shared understanding by the Product Owner and the Scrum Team regarding the level of description of the product backlog items introduced at Sprint planning.
Demo is an opportunity for a team to show their production-ready product to the customer for their feedback. A demo is part of a Sprint Review (see Sprint Review).
Design thinking is a customer-centric development process that creates desirable products that are profitable and sustainable over their life cycle
DevOps refers to technical practices as well as a mindset where software development, integration, automation, and deployment are done in collaboration by a group of people who plan, develop, deploy, and release software.
E
Epic is a feature represented by a collection of user stories. Epics are often used as placeholders for new ideas or for lower-priority features on the bottom of the backlog.
Estimation is a process of agreeing on a size measurement of the user stories and tasks in a product backlog. Estimation measurements may differ, most frequently being story points (see story point).
Extreme programming – see XP
F
Feature is a function or attribute of a software product or service. Features are large requirements delivering incremental value to the customer. Frequently, a feature is represented by one or multiple epics (see epic).
Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers in which the next number is derived by the sum of the previous two (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.). Fibonacci sequence in Agile is frequently used for story point estimation.
Five levels of Agile planning include vision, roadmap, release, iteration (Sprint), and daily standup.
Flow is the continuous delivery of value to the customer.
Forecast is the selection of items from the product backlog the team deems feasible for implementation within a Sprint.
I
Increment is a Scrum artifact that defines the complete and valuable work produced by the team during a Sprint. The sum of all increments forms a product.
Impediment in Scrum is any blocker or challenge that prevents the team from performing their work as efficiently as possible. Impediments are usually announced during the Daily Scrum meeting (see Daily Scrum).
Inspect and adapt is a concept in Scrum that captures the idea of discovering emerging requirements over the course of development as well as ways to improve the overall performance of the team as part of the short ongoing feedback loop.
INVEST is an acronym introduced by Bill Wake that defines a simple set of rules used in creating high-quality user stories: independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable.
Iteration is a standard, fixed-length timebox, during which Agile team delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems. The recommended duration of this timebox is two weeks; however, one to four weeks is acceptable, as long as this duration is consistent.
K
Kanban is a method that originated from Lean manufacturing, which allows to manage knowledge work. Kanban provides techniques to visualize the work and how it moves through the workflow in order to effectively operate and deliver, including understanding and managing risks in delivering products and services to the customers. Using a task board (“Kanban board”), Kanban visually represents the state of work in process (WIP). It also constraints how much work can happen at any specific point in time (WIP limits).
L
Lean refers to a set of principles and practices that maximize customer value while minimizing waste and reducing time to market (TTM).
Lean startup is a business methodology designed to apply Lean manufacturing principles to delivering products and services.
M
Milestone – Milestones are used to track progress toward a specific goal or event.
Minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. A focus on releasing an MVP means that Agile teams can potentially avoid lengthy and unnecessary work before they receive customer feedback.
MoSCoW is a mnemonic describing a prioritization technique used in management, business analysis, project management, and software development to reach a common understanding with stakeholders on the importance they place on the delivery of each requirement. It stands for Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have this time.
N
Nonfunctional requirements (NFR) describe system attributes, such as security, reliability, scalability, and usability (also referred to as “-ilities”). They represent persistent qualities and constraints and usually are part of the Definition of Done (see Definition of Done).
P
Pair programming is a programming technique in which two programmers work together on a single system, part of XP practices (see XP). As studies have shown, pair programmers are more than twice as efficient as one single programmer.
Persona represents an archetypical user of a system, based on the knowledge about the actual users.
Planning Poker is an Agile estimation practice based on consensus-based sizing. It is used to estimate the effort or relative size of user stories by assigning story points to each user story (see story points).
Product refers to a collection of tangible and intangible features that are integrated and packaged into software releases that offer value to a customer or to a market.
Product backlog is a Scrum artifact that consists of a prioritized list of the work to be done in order to create, maintain, and sustain a product. Product backlog is owned and managed by the Product Owner.
Product backlog refinement is the activity in a Sprint through which the Product Owner and the Scrum Team add details to the product backlog.
Product Goal describes a future state of the product that can serve as a target for the Scrum team to plan against.
Product manager is a role that is responsible for the development of products for the customer. Product managers own the business strategy behind a product, specify its functional requirements, and generally manage the launch of features.
Product Owner is a role in Scrum accountable for maximizing the value of a product, primarily by incrementally managing and expressing business and functional expectations for a product to the team.
Product vision is a description of the essence of a product: what are the problems it is solving, for whom, and why now is the right time to build it.
Program increment in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a timebox during which an Agile Release Train (ART) delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems. PIs are typically 8–12 weeks long.
Program increment (PI) planning in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a cadence-based, face-to-face event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART) (see Agile Release Train), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and vision.
Q
Quality is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements (fit for purpose).
R
Release planning is a process in Lean manufacturing that has a goal of synchronizing the projected range of potential delivery dates in the future with tasks to be done today between delivery teams.
Release Train Engineer (RTE) in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART). The RTE’s major responsibilities are to facilitate the ART events and processes and assist the teams in delivering value.
Retrospective is the review and analysis done at the end of every Sprint. The aim is to continuously improve the performance of the Scrum team and adopt better practices.
Roadmap is an artifact that distills the product vision into a high-level plan of features delivered. The roadmap outlines product features that span multiple releases, frequently for one year or even longer.
S
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling Lean and Agile practices.
Scrum is a framework using an Agile mindset for developing, delivering, and sustaining customer-centric products and services, originally refined in 1995 by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland from work done by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. Named after the SCRUM in rugby, this is the most recognized Agile framework based on team-based delivery within timeboxed iterations, called Sprints (see Sprint).
Scrum events (previously, Scrum Ceremonies) – Meetings in Scrum, such as Sprint planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, or Sprint Retrospective. Each event in Scrum is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt Scrum artifacts. Events are used in Scrum to create regularity and to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum.
Scrum Master is a role in Scrum responsible for ensuring the team lives Agile values and principles and follows the processes and practices that the team agreed they would use. The responsibilities of this role include resolving impediments (see Impediment) and establishing an environment where the team can be effective.
Scrum of Scrums is a scaled Agile technique that offers a way to connect multiple teams who need to work together to deliver complex solutions. It helps teams develop and deliver complex products through transparency, inspection, and adaptation at scale.
Spike is a product backlog item that has the goal of providing clarity into delivering a user story via a timeboxed investigation and analysis.
Sprint is a short, timeboxed period when a Scrum team works to complete a set amount of work. Sprints are at the heartbeat of Scrum and Agile methodologies.
Sprint backlog is a list of tasks identified by the Scrum team to be completed during the Scrum Sprint.
Sprint planning is a Scrum event that starts the Sprint. During this event, the team defines what can be delivered in the Sprint and how this work will be achieved.
Sprint Review is an event in Scrum that takes place at the end of the Sprint and has a goal of gathering actionable feedback on what the Scrum team has completed. The Scrum team presents the results of their work to key stakeholders (see demo), and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed.
Stakeholders are people and organization units who frequently interface with the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum team to provide them with inputs and facilitate the creation of the product backlog.
Story points are units of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort required to fully implement a product backlog item, for example, a user story.
Subtask is the smallest unit of work to be tracked. Subtasking is a technique for Scrum team members committing to the parent user story or task to break their work down further and align on who will do it and how.
Sustainable pace refers to the pace at which a team works so that it produces a good flow of business value over an extended period of time without getting burned out.
T
Task (as opposed to user story – see user story) is an element of the product backlog that does not produce customer-facing value by itself. It can refer to design work, data analysis, or compliance review.
Team (also referred to as Scrum team or development team) is a group of individuals (typically between five and nine members) working together to deliver the required product increments.
Technical debt is a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Test automation in software development is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes.
Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before the software is fully developed and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against all test cases.
U
Unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code – sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures – are tested to determine whether they are fit for use.
User experience (UX) refers to the user experience while interacting with a product, system, or service. It includes user perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency.
User experience design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.
User story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software system. It is written from the perspective of a user of a system.
V
Vanity metric is a metric that is not informative or actionable.
Velocity measures how much work a team can complete in an iteration. Velocity is often measured in story points (see story point). Velocity may also measure tasks in hours or an equivalent unit. Velocity is used to measure the effort it will take a particular team to deliver future outcomes by extrapolating on the basis of its prior performance.
W
Work in process, or Work in progress (WIP) refers to any work that has not been completed but that has already incurred a capital cost to the organization. Any software that has been developed but not deployed to production can be considered a work in progress. Sometimes, the term “work in progress” is used with the same meaning.
Working software is fully integrated, tested, and ready to be shipped to customers or deployed into production.
X
XP (Extreme Programming) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements by using an iterative and incremental approach. XP includes 12 development practices, such as Small Releases, On-site Customer, Sustainable Pace, Simple Design, Continuous Integration, Unit Testing, Coding Conventions, Refactoring Mercilessly, Test-Driven Development, System Metaphor, Collective Code Ownership, and Pair Programming.
