Essential Scrum Terms

Release Planning

Longer-term planning that answers questions like "When will we be done?" or "Which features can I get by the end of the year?" or "How much will this cost?" ______________ must balance customer value and overall quality against the constraints of scope, schedule, and budget.

Adaptation

One of the three pillars of empirical process control; feedback is used to make an adjustment to the work product being developed or the process by which it is being developed.

Transparency

One of the three pillars of empirical process control; open access to the unbiased information required for inspection and adaptation.

Scrummerfall.

Overlaying waterfall-style development on the Scrum framework. An example would be performing an analysis sprint, followed by a design sprint, followed by a coding sprint, followed by a testing sprint. Synonymous with WaterScrum.

WaterScrum

Overlaying waterfall-style development on the Scrum framework. An example would be performing an analysis sprint, followed by a design sprint, followed by a coding sprint, followed by a testing sprint. Synonymous with Scrummerfall.

Boy Scout Rule

1. "Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it. If you find a mess on the ground, clean it up regardless of who might have made the mess". 2. Every time you are in an area of the code doing work always leave the code a little leaner, not a little messier, than you found it.

Activity

1. A Scrum practice that involves taking action or performing a process, for example, sprint-planning activity, daily scrum activity, sprint review activity, and sprint retrospective activity. 2. In a general sense, the work performed by the Scrum team members such as writing code, performing tests, creating estimates, and so on.

Self-Organization

1. A bottom-up emergent property of a complex adaptive system whereby the organization of the system emerges over time as a response to its environment. 2. A property of a development team that organizes itself over time, without an external dominating force applying traditional top-down, command-and-control management. 3. Reflects the management philosophy whereby operational decisions are delegated as much as possible to those who have the most detailed knowledge of the consequences and practicalities associated with those decisions.

Unnecessary Formality

1. A ceremony that has a real cost but delivers little or no value (a form of waste). 2. Process for the sake of process.

Release

1. A combination of features that when packaged together make for a coherent deliverable to customers or users. 2. A version of a product that is promoted for use or deployment. Releases represent the rhythm of business-value delivery and should align with defined business cycles.

Servant Leader

1. A person who achieves results for her organization by giving priority attention to the needs of her colleagues and those she serves. 2. A philosophy and practice of leadership based on listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment, and community building.

Simple Domain

1. A situation in which everyone can see cause and effect. often the right answer is obvious and undisputed. 2. One of the domains in the Cynefin frame-work.

Chaotic Domain

1. A situation that requires a rapid response. We are in a crisis and need to act immediately to prevent further harm and reestablish at least some order. 2. One of the domains in the Cynefin Framework.

Agile

1. A specific set of values and principles, as expressed in the Agile Manifesto 2. An umbrella term used for a group of related approaches to software development based on iterative and incremental development, Scrum is an agile approach to development.

Story Mapping

1. A technique that takes a user-centric perspective for generating a set of user stories. Each high-level user activity is decomposed into a workflow that can be further decomposed into a set of detailed tasks. 2. A two-dimensional representation of a traditional one-dimensional product backlog list.

Technical Debt

1. A term used to describe the obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that is expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term. 2. A metaphor that facilitates the communication between business and technical people regarding implementation artifact inadequacies.

Sprint Backlog

1. An artifact produced at a sprint-planning meeting and continuously updated during sprint execution that helps a self-organizing team better plan and manage the work necessary to deliver on the sprint goal. 2. A list of the product backlog items pulled into a sprint and an associated plan for how to achieve them; frequently expressed in terms of tasks that are estimated in ideal hours.

Test-driven development (TDD).

1. An evolutionary approach to development based on writing a failing automated test before the functional code that makes the test pass. Once the code is written to pass the test, the cycle is then repeated, including refactoring the existing code to ensure a coherent cross-functional design. The goal of test-driven development is specification and not validation - to think through a design before code is written, to create clean code that always works. 2. An example of test-first development.

Acceptance Criteria

1. The external quality characteristics specified by the product owner from a business or stakeholder perspective. Acceptance criteria define desired behavior and are used to determine whether a product backlog item has been successfully developed. 2. The exit criteria that a component or a system must satisfy in order to be accepted by a user, customer, or other authorized entity (IEEE 610).

User Role

1. The name for a class of product users. 2. One of the key elements of a user story that defines the recipient of the value delivered by a user story.

Release Plan

1. The output of release planning. On a fixed-date release, the ______________ will specify the range of features available on the fixed future date. On a fixed scope release, the r______________ will specify the range of sprints and costs required to deliver the fixed scope. 2. A plan that communicates, to the level of accuracy that is reasonably possible, when the release will be available, what features will be in the release, and how much will it cost.

Capacity

1. The quantity of resources available to perform useful work. 2. A concept used to help establish a WIP limit by ensuring that we only start work to match the available capacity to complete work.

Acceptance Test

1. The testing carried out to verify that the acceptance criteria have been met. 2. A test that defines the business value each product backlog item must deliver. It may verify functional requirements or nonfunctional requirements such as performance or reliability. It is used to help guide development ( Crispin and Gregory 2009). 3. Formal testing with respect to user needs, requirements, and business processes conducted to determine whether or not a system satisfies the acceptance criteria and to enable the user, customers, or other authorized entity to determine whether or not to accept the system (IEEE 610).

Swarming

A behavior whereby team members with available capacity and appropriate skills collectively work (______________) on an item to finish what has already been started before moving ahead to begin work on new items.

All-Before-Any

A characteristic of a sequential development process, where the work product from a previous step in a process is transferred to the next step using a batch size of 100%.

Release Goal

A clear statement of the purpose and desired outcome of a release. A release goal is created by considering many factors, including the target customers, high-level architectural issues, and significant marketplace events.

Theme

A collection of related user stories. A theme provides a convenient way to indicate that a set of stories have something in common, such as being in the same functional area.

Scrum Framework

A collection of values, principles, practices, and rules that form the foundation of Scrum-based development.

User Story

A convenient format for expressing the desired business value for many types of product backlog items. User stories are crafted in a way that makes them understandable for both business people and technical people. They are structurally simple and typically expressed ,in a format such as ''As a <user role> I want to achieve <goal> so that I get <benefit>., They provide a great placeholder for a conversation. Additionally, they can be written at various levels of granularity and are easy to progressively refine.

Technique

A defined procedure that is used to perform some or all of an activity or support an approach.

Silent Grouping

A facilitation technique for getting people to group related items without talking, relying only on the individual placement and movement of items (typically cards or sticky notes) as a means of communicating and coordinating among the participants. A technique frequently used during the sprint retrospective activity.

Timebox

A fixed-length period of time during which an activity is performed. In Scrum, sprints are ______________ed iterations where a team works at a sustainable pace to complete a chosen, WIP-limited set of work.

Strategic Technical Debt

A form of technical debt that is used as a tool to help organizations better quantify and leverage the economics of important, often time-sensitive, decisions. Sometimes taking on technical debt for strategic reasons is a sensible business choice. Contrast with naive technical debt, unavoidable technical debt.

Unavoidable Technical Debt

A form of technical debt that is usually unpredictable and unpreventable and accrues through no fault of the team building the product. Contrast with naive technical debt, strategic technical debt.

Burndown Chart

A graph that shows on the vertical axis the quantity of work (in either hours or product backlog item units remaining over time, the general trend in the graph is to burn down to a point where no work remains. We can show projected outcomes on ___________________ by calculating a trend line to see when work might be completed.

Burnup Chart

A graph that shows the progress of work toward a goal line associated with a value on the vertical axis. As work is completed over time (the horizontal axis), the progress line moves up (burns up) to be nearer to the goal line. We can show projected outcomes on ________________ by calculating a trend line to see when work might be completed.

Assumption

A guess, or belief, that is presumed to be true, real, or certain even though there is no validated learning to know that it is true.

Sprint Goal

A high-level summary of the goal the product owner would like to accomplish during the sprint. Frequently elaborated through a specific set of product backlog items.

Relative Size Measure

A means of expressing the overall size of an item where the absolute value is not considered, but the relative size of an item compared to other items is considered. For example, an item of size 2 is half the size of an item of size 4, but we have no idea how big an item of size 2 or 4 is in some absolute sense.

Velocity

A measure of the rate at which work is completed per unit of time. Using Scrum, ______________ is typically measured as the sum of the size estimates of the product backlog items that are completed in a sprint. ______________ is reported in the same units as product backlog items-usually story points or ideal days. ______________ measures output (the size of what was delivered), not the outcome (the value of what was delivered).

Story Point

A measure of the relative size of product backlog items that takes into account factors such as complexity and physical size. Typically determined by engaging in Planning Poker.

Chickens

A metaphor used by some Scrum teams to indicate that people are invested in the goal of the Scrum team, but at a level of involvement (not accountable) rather than commitment. best used to refer to people outside of the Scrum team. Derived from an old joke about a chicken and a pig: "In a ham-and-eggs breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pigs is committed."

T-shaped skills

A metaphor used to describe a person with deep vertical skills in a specialized area (such as UX design) as well as broad but not necessarily very deep skills in other relevant areas (such as testing and documentation). Team members with _________________ better enable swarming behavior.

Stakeholder

A person, group, or organization that affects or can be affected by an organization's actions.

Solution

A product or a service that results from a development effort.

Cadence

A regular, predictable rhythm or heartbeat. Sprints of consistent duration establish a cadence for a development effort.

Ceremony

A ritualistic or symbolic activity that is performed on well defined occasions. Some people refer to the core Scrum activities of sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective as ceremonies.

Sequential Process

A sequential style of development that attempts to plan for and anticipate up front all of the features a user might want in the end product and to determine how best to build those features. The work plan is based on execution of a sequential set of work-specific phases. Similar to Plan-Driven Development.

Sprint

A short-duration, timeboxed iteration. Typically a timebox between one week and a calendar month during which the Scrum team is focused on producing a potentially shippable product increment that meets the Scrum team's agreed-upon definition of done.

Team

A small, cross-functional collection of diverse, collaborating people who are aligned to a common purpose and goal. ______________ members trust each other and work together to achieve the goal, holding themselves mutually accountable for the outcome. Contrast with group.

Approach

A specific way to realize a practice or activity. For example, Scrum specifies a sprint retrospective. How a team chooses to perform a sprint retrospective is its approach, which may be different form the approaches of other teams.

Single-Piece Flow

A state where items are produced one at a time and flow (are pulled) through the development process as a single unit.

Targeted Technical Debt

A status category for technical debt that represents debt that is known and has been targeted for servicing by the development team. Contrast with happened-upon technical debt, known technical debt.

Traditional Development Process

A style of development that attempts to plan for and anticipate up front all of the features a user might want in the end product and to determine how best to build those features. The work plan is based on execution of a sequential set of work-specific phases.

Artifact

A tangible by-product produced during product development. The product backlog, sprint backlog, and potentially shippable product increment are examples of Scrum artifacts.

Scrum Team

A team composed of a product owner, ScrumMaster, and development team that works on a Scrum development effort.

Test-First Development.

A technical practice where the tests are written before !he development is performed. An example is test-driven development.

Specification by Example

A technique in which the participants collaboratively discuss acceptance criteria, specifically using examples, and then distill them into a set of concrete acceptance tests before development begins.

Acceptance-Test-Driven Development

A technique in which the participants collaboratively discuss acceptance criteria, using examples, and then distill them into a set of concrete acceptance tests before development begins. Synonymous with specification by example.

Scrum

A term borrowed from the sport of rugby. 1. A lightweight agile framework for managing complex product and service development. 2. An iterative and incremental approach to developing products and managing work.

Waterfall

A term referring to the graphical depiction of a development process in which the sequential phases of work are shown flowing steadily downwards like a cascading waterfall.

Validated Learning

A term to describe the progress made when important assumptions have been confirmed or refuted by subjecting each assumption to one or more customer validation tests. Contrast with assumption.

Timeboxing

A time management technique that helps organize the performance of work and manage scope.

Sprint Planning

A time when the Scrum team gathers to agree on a sprint goal and determine what subset of the product backlog it can deliver during the forthcoming sprint. During _________________, a sprint backlog is produced to help the team acquire confidence that it can deliver the committed product backlog items.

Sprintable Story

A user story that is sized small enough to fit nicely within a sprint. Similar to Implementable Stories.

Waterfall process

A waterfall (one way/start to finish) style of development that attempts to plan for and anticipate up front all of the features a user might want in the end product and to determine how best to build those features. The work plan is based on execution of a sequential set of work-specific phases. Similar to Plan-Driven Development.

User-Story-Writing Workshop

A workshop lasting from a few hours to a few days where a diverse team of participants collectively brainstorms desired business value and creates user story placeholders for what the product or service is supposed to do.

ATTD

Acceptance-Test-Driven Development

Anticipatory Process

An anticipatory style of development that attempts to plan for and anticipate up front all of the features a user might want in the end product and to determine how best to build those features. The work plan is based on execution of a sequential set of work-specific phases. Similar to Plan-Driven Development.

Scrum of Scrums

An approach to coordinating the work of multiple Scrum teams wherein one or more members of each Scrum team come together to discuss and resolve inter-team dependency issues.

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)

An economically optimal algorithm for scheduling work in an environment where both the cost of delay and the duration vary among the work items.

Task Board

An information radiator used during sprint execution to communicate the progress and flow of task-level work within a sprint.

Sprint Retrospective

An inspect-and-adapt activity performed at the end of every sprint. The ______________ is a continuous improvement opportunity for a Scrum team to review its process (approaches to performing Scrum) and to identify opportunities to improve it.

Sprint Review

An inspect-and-adapt activity that occurs after sprint execution where the Scrum team shows to all interested parties what was accomplished during the sprint. The _________________ gives everyone with input in the product development effort an opportunity to inspect what has been built so far and adapt what will be built next.

Waste

Any activity that consumes resources and produces no added value to the product or service that a customer receives.

Synchronization

Causing multiple events to happen at the same time. Frequently used to ensure that multiple Scrum teams work together in a coordinated way by starting and ending their sprints on the same days.

All-at-Once Product Development

Doing all types of work (for example, analysis, design, coding, integrating, and testing) opportunistically within a single iteration.

XP

Extreme Programming

Accuracy

How close a measured value is to the actual value - the proximity of the measure to its true value. For example, estimating that he product will ship in October 2015 is accurate if the product ships any day during October 2015.

Sprint Demo

I. An activity of a sprint review where the completed (done) product backlog items are demonstrated with the goal of promoting an information-rich discussion between the Scrum team and other sprint review participants. 2. A term that is frequently used synonymously to refer to the entire sprint review.

Values

I. Those things that we hold dear or precious. 2. The foundation of a shared operating agreement among members of a team. Core Scrum ________________ include honesty, openness, courage, respect, focus, trust, empowerment, and collaboration.

SoS

Scrum of Scrums.

Uncertainty

Something that is not known or established. Often considered synonymous with risk but is actually broader in scope because uncertainty includes both risks (negative outcomes) and opportunities (positive outcomes).

TDD

Test-Driven Development

Sustainable Pace

The appropriately aggressive 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.

Batch Size

The cardinality of a set of items to be processed at some future step.

ScrumMaster

The coach, facilitator, impediment remover, and servant leader of the Scrum team. The ______________ is one of the three roles on a Scrum team. The ______________ provides process leadership and helps the Scrum team and the rest of the organization develop their own high-performance, organization-specific Scrum approach.

Strategic Filter

The decision criteria used by an organization to evaluate whether a proposed product meets the strategic criteria to move forward for additional consideration. Contrast with economic filter.

Won't-Have Features

The set of features that are specifically declared to not be in the upcoming release. Contrast with must-have features, nice-to-have features.

Technical Practices

The specific practices or techniques that are used during sprint execution to properly perform the work required to deliver features that have manageable levels of technical debt and meet the Scrum team's definition of done. technical stories. A "user" story (product backlog item) that delivers no perceived end-user value but does deliver important architecture or infrastructure needed to deliver future user value.

Variability

The spread or dispersion of a set of data representing non-identical outcomes. In manufacturing, ______________ is always waste. In product development, some ______________ is necessary to develop innovative solutions.

WIP

Work in process

Task

The technical work that a development team performs in order to complete a product backlog item. Most __________(s) are defined to be small, representing no more than a few hours to a day or so of work.

Unknown Unknowns

The things that we don't yet know that we don't know.

Stakeholder Value

The value that a solution delivers to stakeholders. Sometimes used interchangeably with customer value.

Practice

The way in which a principle is supported or realized. For example, the principle of demonstrating progress is supported by the sprint review Scrum practice.

Work in Process

Work that has entered the development process but is not yet finished and available to a customer or user. Refers to all assets or work products of a product or service that are currently being worked on or waiting in a queue to be worked on.

Tacit Knowledge

Unwritten and unspoken knowledge (including insights, intuitions, and hunches) that is hard, but not impossible, to articulate with formal language. The opposite of explicit or formal knowledge. Sometimes referred to as "know-how".

WSJF

Weighted Shortest Job First