A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W
- Absolute estimation
- An approach to estimation using fixed units of time, such as hours, days, or weeks, often compared with relative estimation methods.
- Acceptance criteria
- Standards used to assess the completeness and functionality of a developed feature.
- Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
- A collaborative method where team members with varying expertise (customer, development, testing) develop acceptance tests before implementing the corresponding functionality.
- Acceptance testing
- A testing process that confirms whether a software product behaves as expected, often defined through examples or usage scenarios.
- Adaptation
- Refers to changes made by a team in response to insights gained during the inspection phase, one of the three pillars of empiricism.
- Adaptive approach
- A strategy contrasting with predictive methods that incorporates flexibility and responsiveness to changes.
- Agile
- A product development approach that emphasises incremental and iterative delivery.
- Agile champions
- Proponents within an organisation who promote and facilitate the adoption of Agile practices.
- Agile development
- A collection of iterative software development methodologies, including Scrum, Lean, DSDM, and eXtreme Programming (XP)..
- Agile iteration
- A concise time frame, usually one to two weeks, in which a team focuses on refining a process to enhance its effectiveness, and on delivering value to the customer through a working prototype.
- Agile Manifesto
- Outlines the four foundational values of Agile development: preference for individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.
- Agile mindset
- A flexible and adaptive way of thinking that embraces quick response to change and fosters Agile practices.
- Agile principle
- The twelve guiding principles conceived alongside the Agile Manifesto in 2001 that inform Agile practices and behaviours.
- Agile Release Train (ART)
- In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), a group of Agile teams that collaboratively develops and delivers solutions.
- Agile Release Train Engineer (RTE)
- In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), the role of a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train.
- Agile software development
- A method of software creation where small, self-organising teams use close collaboration and short delivery cycles to enhance development efficiency and reduce costs.
- Agile transformation
- The transition of an organisation’s culture and processes from traditional methodologies to those based on Agile principles.
- Agile values
- The core values listed in the Agile Manifesto, introduced in 2001 when the Agile movement was formally initiated.
- Agile working group
- A group within an organisation that champions Agile methods, assisting in the change process and removing obstacles. Also referred to as Agile Champions.
- Anti-pattern
- Ineffective recurring solutions to problems that often lead to negative consequences.
- Artifacts
- In Scrum, these are the tools that aid team development, including Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Increment.
- Automated build
- The process of transforming files and other assets into a software product without human intervention, based solely on information in the version control repository.
- Automated test
- Within eXtreme Programming (XP), these are function-level tests that are executed automatically upon code integration or at scheduled intervals.
- Backlog
- Work items that have been prioritised but are yet to be completed.
- Backlog grooming
- The ongoing process of reviewing and prioritising backlog items to ensure they are ready for delivery.
- Backlog refinement
- See backlog grooming.
- Batch size reduction
- Decreasing the size of work items to improve flow through the system, reducing risks and accelerating feedback and learning.
- Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
- A practice where team discussions around the expected behaviour of a system lead to a mutual understanding of the required functionality.
- Bottleneck
- A point in a process or operation that limits capacity and consequently reduces the overall throughput.
- Burndown chart
- A burndown chart is a graphical representation showing the volume of work completed over time during a project iteration or the entire project.
- Burnup chart
- A burnup chart is used to illustrate progress by displaying the cumulative amount of work completed in the context of the total amount of work.
- Business agility
- The capability of an organisation to quickly adapt to internal or external changes to deliver value to its customers.
- Business value
- The perceived benefits and importance of a feature or backlog item from a customer’s perspective.
- Cadence
- The duration of a Sprint or release cycle, defining the rhythm of the team’s development efforts.
- Capacity
- An estimate of the volume of work that an Agile team can undertake considering the available team members and workdays.
- Ceremonies
- Agile ceremonies are meetings, such as daily planning, that outline completed tasks, upcoming work, and potential obstacles.
- Ceremony
- Any of a variety of routine proceedings in Agile methodology, typically involving status checking and planning.
- Collective code ownership
- The principle that code may be edited by any team member to add functionality, repair defects, or refactor code, thereby eliminating bottlenecks.
- Collective ownership
- The shared agreement that all team members have the authority to modify any part of the codebase as needed. See collective code ownership.
- Collocated team
- Teams that work in physical proximity to one another in the same location.
- Communities of practice
- Groups with shared interests collaborating to exchange knowledge and address common challenges, often used in Agile during the transition to cross-functional teams.
- Continuous deployment
- The practice of deploying every qualifying change to production, thereby reducing the time between code creation and its use by end-users.
- Continuous delivery
- Continuous delivery is the discipline of reliably and repeatedly pushing out enhancements and bug fixes to customers at a high frequency.
- Continuous integration
- Continuous integration is the practice of frequently merging code changes into a central repository to ensure a product can be released at any time.
- Continuous everything
- A DevOps concept that emphasises the automation of various stages including testing, staging, and deployment to enhance agility.
- COD – Cost of Delay
- The potential loss incurred by failing to deliver market value at the optimal time.
- Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)
- A visual representation of the various stages of work items, commonly associated with Kanban.
- Cycle time
- The duration required for a team to complete a work item from the commencement of work to delivery to the customer.
- DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery)
- A framework for making process-related decisions in Agile development.
- Daily Scrum
- A brief team meeting in the Scrum framework focusing on work done, upcoming tasks, and current roadblocks.
- Daily standup
- See Daily Scrum.
- Definition of Done
- A checklist of criteria a Product Increment must satisfy to be considered complete at the end of a Sprint.
- Definition of Ready
- Clear criteria that backlog items must meet to be deemed ready for inclusion in an upcoming iteration, often based on the INVEST matrix.
- Dependency
- A requirement for one team’s output that is contingent on another team’s involvement or delivery.
- Developers
- In the Scrum framework, developers are team members who are collectively responsible for creating a usable Product Increment each Sprint.
- DevOps
- DevOps is an approach that integrates the development team’s activities with IT operations to enable continuous delivery.
- Disciplined Agile
- An Agile decision-making toolkit created by Scott Ambler and Mark Lines, later acquired by the Project Management Institute (PMI).
- Distributed teams
- Teams that work remotely or are geographically dispersed.
- DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method)
- DSDM is an Agile method of software development that evolved into the DSDM project management framework.
- Emergence
- The process through which new developments or knowledge suddenly come to light or gain prominence unexpectedly.
- Empirical process control
- A control method that emphasises regular review and adaptation based on the outcomes observed from the process itself, often contrasted with planned, predictive approaches.
- Empiricism
- A decision-making approach that relies on observation, experimentation, and experience rather than theoretical speculation. Empiricism is underpinned by transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
- Epic
- An epic is a substantial user story that is too large to be completed in a single iteration or can be subdivided into smaller, more manageable user stories.
- Estimation
- The process of evaluating the amount of effort required to fulfil a particular development task, commonly expressed in units of time.
- Estimation points
- A unit of measurement used by Agile teams to express the size and complexity of tasks or user stories, often referred to as ‘story points‘.
- Exploratory testing
- An approach to software testing that emphasises simultaneous learning, test design, and execution, as opposed to following predefined test scripts.
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- An Agile software development methodology that focuses on enhancing the quality of software and the quality of life for the development team, prescribing specific engineering practices.
- Facilitation
- The role or act of guiding a group through a process or meeting to ensure effective participation and achieve desired outcomes.
- Feature Driven Development (FDD)
- Feature Driven Development (FDD) is a Agile software development framework centered on progress tracking through ‘features’, akin to user stories.
- Feature team
- An Agile team equipped with all the necessary skills to deliver customer requirements directly, without dependencies on other teams.
- Fibonacci sequence
- A sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, commonly used in Agile estimation (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …).
- Flow metrics
- Measurements used to gauge the delivery rate of business value in software products, viewed from the customer perspective.
- Frequent releases
- The practice in Agile of regularly releasing the product to end-users and incorporating their feedback.
- Given – When – Then
- A template pattern for framing acceptance tests for a user story, involving specifying the context (Given), the action (When), and the expected outcome (Then).
- Heartbeat retrospective
- A recurring meeting where the team reflects on significant events since the last meeting and identifies improvement opportunities.
- Incremental development
- An approach in which each new version of a product is functional and enhances the previous version by adding discernible features.
- Information radiators
- Displays placed in a prominent location to provide team members with up-to-date information at a glance.
- Integration
- The process or actions required to combine project components and deliver a cohesive product ready for release.
- INVEST
- A set of quality criteria for user stories ensuring they are Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.
- Iteration
- An iteration is a fixed timeframe during which development occurs, which can vary in length from project to project.
- Iterative development
- Iterative development is an approach where software development activities are repeated, and work products may be revised, accommodating planned rework like refactoring.
- Impediment
- Any obstacle that reduces the team’s efficiency or hinders their goal achievement.
- Increment
- In Scrum, the subset of the product that has been delivered by the team at the end of a Sprint that provides added value.
- Information refrigerators
- A display or repository of team information that isn’t readily visible and requires effort to uncover, often within an online tool.
- Inspection
- The systematic review of progress towards agreed product and Sprint goals, forming the second pillar of empiricism.
- Integration testing
- A level of software testing where developers verify that individual units work cohesively to achieve the intended outcomes.
- Kaizen
- A Japanese term meaning ‘good change’, synonymous with the concept of continuous improvement in lean and Agile methodologies.
- Kanban
- Kanban is a method for managing and improving work processes in knowledge work environments by visualising the workflow, limiting work in progress, and aiming to finish work before starting new tasks.
- Kanban board
- A Kanban board is a visual tool representing a workflow, usually segmented into columns to show different stages of the process.
- Lead time
- The interval from the initiation of a process, such as a customer placing an order, to its completion, for instance, product delivery. In software, it refers to the period between a requirement request and its fulfilment.
- Lean
- Lean is a methodology aimed at reducing waste and non-value-adding activities, thereby delivering greater value to customers.
- Lean software development
- Lean software development is an Agile methodology that focuses on the efficient use of resources and time, eradicating waste and ensuring delivery aligns with the precise needs of the product.
- Lean thinking
- An approach to organisational activities that seeks to deliver more societal benefits and value to individuals while cutting out wasteful practices.
- LeSS (Large-scale Scrum)
- LeSS is an approach to scaling Agile development for multiple teams working together on a single product.
- Mad Sad Glad
- A retrospective technique that aids in understanding the emotional well-being of the team, encouraging a positive work environment by exploring team members’ feelings and addressing their concerns.
- Milestone retrospective
- An in-depth examination conducted by a team to discuss and learn from the significant occurrences that have taken place during a project or at its conclusion.
- Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF)
- The smallest set of functionality within a product that still delivers significant value to the user and can be developed swiftly.
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- The most basic iteration of a new product that enables a team to gather the maximum amount of validated customer learning with the least effort.
- Mob programming
- A collaborative approach to software development where the entire team works on the same task, at the same time, in the same space, using a single computer.
- Mock objects
- Simulated objects that mimic the behaviour of actual software components within a testing environment, commonly used to support automated unit testing.
- Nexus
- A framework for scaling Scrum that accommodates up to nine Scrum teams working from a single Product Backlog to deliver an integrated product.
- Open space
- An approach to collaboration that brings together individuals to co-create their own learning experiences with just enough structure to maintain progress.
- Pair programming
- A technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation, with one ‘driver’ writing code and the ‘navigator’ reviewing each line of code as it is typed.
- Personas
- Fictional characters created to represent different user types that might use a product in a similar way.
- Planning Poker
- Planning Poker is a consensus-based estimating technique where team members use cards with numerical values to represent their estimation of effort for user stories.
- Product Owner
- A Product Owner is the team member who is accountable for managing the Product Backlog and ensuring the team delivers value in line with the product goals.
- Project chartering
- The creation of a document that provides a high-level overview of a project’s objectives, constraints, and critical success factors, often displayed openly for the team.
- Pairing
- Extension of pair programming practices to other roles and activities beyond development, where two individuals work together on the same task.
- Participatory decision-making
- A democratic process where all group members contribute to making decisions that effectively address shared challenges.
- Product Backlog item
- An element within the Product Backlog representing a feature, enhancement, or requirement necessary for product development.
- Product Backlog refinement
- An ongoing process of breaking down and clarifying Product Backlog items into smaller, more precise work increments. See backlog grooming.
- Product roadmap
- A strategic overview that outlines the vision, direction, and progress of a product over time, generally spanning several quarters.
- Program Increment Planning (PI Planning)
- A method used for coordinating multiple interdependent teams as they plan a deliverable increment of work, also called Big Room Planning.
- Pull system
- A lean production strategy that focuses on demand-driven movement of resources through the production process, minimising inventory and waste.
- Product manager
- Product managers focus on external market factors and customer needs and are responsible for the vision, strategic goals, and high-level planning of a product.
- Queue
- A temporary storage space for items awaiting the next step in a workflow process. Agile teams aim to reduce queues by minimising batch sizes and addressing bottlenecks.
- Quick design session
- A collaborative meeting where developers gather to make design decisions, particularly when simple design choices have significant implications.
- Refactoring
- Enhancing an existing codebase’s internal structure without modifying its external functionality.
- Relative estimation
- An Agile estimation approach where tasks or user stories are evaluated in relation to one another instead of through absolute units of time.
- Release
- The process of delivering a product or solution incrementally; internal releases are for use within the organisation, while external releases are distributed to customers.
- Release plan
- An Agile planning document outlining the expected work items and iterations required to deliver a product release.
- Release Train (RT)
- Equivalent to the Agile Release Train in SAFe, coordinating multiple teams’ releases.
- Retrospective
- A retrospective is a meeting occurring at the end of every Sprint where the team collaborates to pinpoint and prioritise actions to enhance their process.
- RAD (Rapid Application Development)
- An Agile development approach which facilitates rapid solution-building through direct communication with end-users to satisfy business requirements.
- Ready
- Similar to the Definition of Done, this is a checklist some teams utilise to ensure backlog items can commence and conclude within the same Sprint.
- Requirements
- Captured as ‘stories’, these are compiled into a prioritised list known as the ‘Backlog’.
- Rules of simplicity
- A set of guidelines designed by Kent Beck to determine whether code is sufficiently simple.
- SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework enterprise)
- SAFe is an Agile methodology conceived for applying Agile practices and principles to software development at scale.
- Scaled Agile
- Extending Agile practices to large projects or programmes, for example, through multiple sub-projects or tranches of projects.
- Scaling
- Scaling is the act of applying established team-based Agile approaches like Scrum and Kanban to larger groups.
- Scrum
- Scrum is a framework used for managing product development and other knowledge work, based on empirical evidence gathered through experimentation and adjustment.
- Scrum artifact
- In Scrum, artifacts are designed to maximize transparency of key information so that everybody has the same understanding. Scrum defines three artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment.
- Scrum board
- A Scrum board is a visual tool depicting the work progress of an ongoing Sprint, with items typically displayed across various workflow stages.
- Scrum Event
- A Scrum event is a formal occasion for evaluating and amending Scrum artifacts. Scrum events include: the Sprint itself, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Scrum Review, Scrum Retrospective.
- Scrum Master
- The Scrum Master role is tasked with ensuring the team honours Agile values and follows the processes and practices that have been agreed upon.
- Scrum of Scrums
- A Scrum of Scrums is a method for scaling Scrum to larger groups by structuring them into smaller Agile teams.
- Scrum pillars
- The three pillars of Scrum support its empirical framework, which is based on empiricism or empirical process control. The three pillars are: transparency, inspection, adaptation.
- Scrum team
- A Scrum team is a self-organising, cross-functional group responsible for delivering the Product Backlog items, encompassing all skills necessary to deliver end-to-end functionality. A Scrum team includes one Product Owner, one Scrum Master, and between 3-7 Developers.
- Scrum values
- Scrum values are the principles that guide the Scrum Team’s actions and behaviours, including Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage.
- Scrumban
- Scrumban is a hybrid framework that combines elements of Scrum and Kanban methods.
- Self-organisation
- The process of enabling teams to manage their own workload and progress without external assignment or tracking.
- Sign up for tasks
- A process where members of an Agile development team voluntarily select tasks to work on, rather than assignments being handed down by management.
- Simple design
- Adherence to a set of principles that guide a team’s software design strategy towards simplicity.
- Spike
- A type of user story aimed at conducting research or building a technical proof of concept, typically time-boxed to a short duration.
- Sprint
- A Sprint is a predetermined, fixed period of time during which a Scrum team works to complete selected items from the Product Backlog.
- Sprint Backlog
- A Sprint Backlog is a selection of Product Backlog items chosen by the team to focus on during a Sprint, representing the work required to achieve the Sprint goal.
- Sprint Goal
- The primary objective set for a Sprint that provides value and context to the stakeholders.
- Sprint Planning
- Sprint Planning is a Scrum event that kick-starts the Sprint by determining the scope of work to be undertaken throughout the Sprint.
- Sprint Retrospective
- A Sprint Retrospective is a meeting to reflect on the recently concluded Sprint, identifying lessons learned to encourage continuous improvement.
- Sprint Review
- A Sprint Review is a Scrum event conducted at the end of a Sprint where the Increment is reviewed and stakeholders provide feedback.
- Stakeholder
- Individuals either within or outside the organisation who have a vested interest in the success or failure of a project.
- Story mapping
- An exercise in which user stories are arranged based on the sequence of activities and implementation sophistication.
- Story points
- Story points are estimation units used by some Agile teams to appraise the effort required to complete Product Backlog items.
- Story splitting
- The act of decomposing a user story into smaller, independent stories, each retaining its own measurable business value.
- Sustainable pace
- A working pace that a team could maintain indefinitely without detriment to performance or quality.
- System testing
- A stage in software testing ensuring overall system functionality in the intended deployment environment.
- Task
- A constituent of Product Backlog items representing the specific actions necessary for their completion, as defined during Sprint Planning.
- Task board
- A physical or digital visualisation of the work and its stages used by Agile teams to track progress and organise workload.
- Test-Driven Development (TDD)
- Test-Driven Development incorporates a cycle of writing tests, production code, and design, resulting in reduced defect rates and better code quality.
- Technical debt
- The future cost incurred from code that is quick to implement in the short term but may be inefficient and costly to amend or extend.
- Team
- A small, dedicated group of individuals who work together on the same project, typically full-time.
- Team room
- A private space allocated to a project team for the duration of the project, away from external disturbances.
- The Three C’s
- A concept encapsulating the idea of ‘Card, Conversation, Confirmation’, highlighting the social dynamic of user stories.
- Three Questions
- A framework of three questions used to structure daily meetings: What has been completed? What is next? What is impeding progress?
- Timebox
- A timebox is a predetermined period dedicated to achieving a particular goal, with a focus on steady progression towards task completion. A Sprint is an example of a timebox.
- Timeboxing
- A technique used to allocate a fixed unit of time for a given activity, thereby helping Agile Scrum teams define, organise, and manage their work.
- Transparency
- One of the fundamental Scrum pillars is transparency, which ensures all aspects of the project are visible, open for inspection, and not obscured from scrutiny.
- User story
- A user story is a representation of a business need formulated in everyday language, specifying the user, their requirement, and the reason.
- User story mapping
- Arranging user stories in a visual representation to outline user interactions with a product.
- User story template
- A framework for writing user stories typically following the pattern: ‘As a [role], I want [feature], so that [reason].’
- Value stream map
- A tool from Lean methodology used to visualise and analyse the flow of processes to identify and address inefficiencies.
- Value stream mapping
- Creating a detailed visual representation of the steps involved in a workflow to facilitate improvement.
- Velocity
- In Agile, velocity is a metric that quantifies the total effort estimates associated with user stories completed in an iteration.
- Version control
- A system that records changes to a file or set of files over time, enabling collaboration and continuous integration in Agile practices.
- Wait time
- In Lean methodology, the duration in a process where items are inert, adding no value as they await further action.
- Waterfall
- Waterfall is a linear project management methodology characterised by sequential phases and comprehensive upfront requirements gathering, contrasting with Agile approaches.
- Work in progress (WIP)
- Refers to the number of task increments currently under development by an engineering team. WIP limits may be employed by Agile teams using Kanban to concentrate on a fewer number of tasks at any one time.