S310 Agile

What is a common template for a user story?

"As a ______ I want to _______ so I can _______" This helps shows the importance of the requirement. Is it even necessary? Needs to be a business reason why we have this.

Describe the Sprint Review.

"What did we get done?" Produces agreement on done-ness, team shows what they built, PO accepts/rejects work and Stakeholders may participate

Describe "The Sprint."

1. Can be 1 - 4 weeks long 2. Produces a potentially shippable product increment - an increment of work that is "done" 3. Team decides how much they are willing to commit to produce during a given Sprint 4. Once Sprint begins, work statement is locked down and does not change until the next Sprint 5. Concludes with Sprint Review - Product Owner can accept or reject each completed feature and stakeholders can see the product.

What tasks does the Scrum Master take on?

1. Coaches development team 2. Coaches product owner 3. Protects team 4. Drives organizational changes

What are the four concepts of Agile?

1. Framework 2. Minimizing Risk 3. Time-boxed iterations 4. Working product

What are some benefits of relative estimation?

1. Humans are terrible at absolute estimation but quite good at relative estimation 2. It is generally faster 3. It gets a team thinking (and talking) as a group, rather than as individuals 4. It encourages spending analysis time appropriately 5. It is cost-effective 6. Ultimate goal is an achievable sprint commitment

What are 2 exceptions for adding additional work during a Sprint?

1. If we find critical bug after implementation, that is mission critical, then Sprint can be put on hold or some people can be taken off Sprint. 2. If we find out we have room at the end of a Sprint, we can ask product owner if they would like to add another requirements. This is completely up to dev team to decide if they have the room to add more work.

Describe Product Owners.

1. NOT a product manager. There is no product manager in Scrum. They are not in charge of development team. They do not boss around development team. Work in partnership with team to ensure requirements are being met. 2. They are responsible for the project delivering value to organization. Head on the chopping block if goes wrong. 3. Produces overall product direction (the "vision"). Manages return on investment.

Describe the "Sprint Planning Meeting."

1. Produces Sprint Commitment 2. The "What do you mean by this?" meeting 3. Team clarifies requirements, estimates work, establishes the Sprint Commitment and breaks work into tasks

What are three Scrum Artifacts?

1. Product Backlog 2. Sprint Backlog/Sprint Commitment 3. Burndown Chart

Describe Scrum Masters.

1. Removal of impediments 2. Facilitation of the Scrum process itself. 3. Pretty much is the problem handler, helps to work out kinks. 4. Depending on how things are going, this could be a very easy role or an incredibly difficult role. Just depends on the situation. (New team? Difficult product? Unsupportive organization?) 5. Want this person to be certified

What tasks does the development team take on?

1. Self Manages 2. Makes Estimates 3. Defines Tasks Team must be in agreement about what is possible, what can be achieved.

Describe "Story Time."

1. Story Time meetings are Product Backlog Grooming Sessions. Dev Team and Product Owners meet, and typically stakeholders are also brought in. 2. Regular Story Time meetings make building and maintaining the Product Backlog much easier. 3. Most teams benefit from at least one Story Time per Sprint. 4. Product Owner has final say on requirements issues 5. Teams share ideas with Product Owner for creating actionable backlog items 6. Scrum Masters ensure everyone contributes and help keep the process moving. (Don't talk about item #150, we're only at #20)

What are examples of systems used to estimate stories?

1. T-shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) 2. Fibonacci series style (i.e. 1,2,3,5,8,13) 3. Ideal days 4. Hours

What tasks does the Product Owner take on?

1. Work with stakeholders to gather and articulate requirements 2. Work with team to determine done-ness 3. Determines release schedule. (Does not need to be released after every sprint. Can be flexible as when products are released or updates are published.)

What are user stories?

A format for writing requirements such that they are implementation independent. User stories also allow you to: 1. State requirements from the viewpoints of different stakeholders. 2. Stop talking about the system and start talking about how people will use the system.

What is a Burndown Chart?

A graphical representation of the amount of work left to do versus the time left in which it do it. Sprint Burndown Charts are updated daily

What is a Product Backlog?

A master list of all deliverables (features, enhancements, bug fixes, business process changes, documentation) in a priority order Essentially the "inventory" of your project. If you try to gather ALL the requirements up front, you are paying for inventory you cannot sell. It is okay to have vague user stories at first. Product Backlog is a living breathing document.

What are story points and velocity?

A numeric value assigned to a relative estimation ranking for the purposes of calculating velocity. The average number of points delivered by a given team each sprint is called the team's velocity

Can one Scrum master work multiple teams?

Absolutely! Just depends on the team. A super well working team wouldn't need that much work, so a Scrum Master could work on another project. Just depends on their schedule.

What is a task?

Acceptance Criteria is the END GOAL, the tasks are how we get there. User stories are often broken into tasks, the specific actions the teams needs to take to fulfill the story.

How are technical work and knowledge acquisition (training) handled in Agile?

Add to Product Backlog. Can't do 60 points of requirements in one sprint if you have to install new software for half the sprint, can maybe only do 30 points. Same could be said for employee training.

Describe the Daily Scrum.

Daily 15-minute meetings in which each team member shares: 1. What they have accomplished since the last meeting 2. What they will be working on between ow and the next meeting 3. Any impediments they are experiencing Dev Team only typically. PO can be there, but they have a very passive role. PO can be asked for insight though.

Which Scrum role is the "how" and the "how much we can get done."

Development Team

How is Maintenance and Support handled in Agile?

Eventually when we enter this phase, these are not handled in agile process. At the point at which the Product Owner calls the project done, project is rolled into maintenance phase. This is established in advance. PO may decide that the project will likely be done in 3 - 4 more Sprints.

What if the Scrum Master is the manager of one or more team members?

It depends on the person. For instance, prof had a boss would reprimand employees for disagreeing with the team. This is a problem if one is the Scrum Master. Dev team needs to be able to trust Scrum Master, voice opinions and agree/disagree freely.

What is a Sprint Backlog?

Items the team committed to complete in a given Sprint. Gives the status of a Sprint

What is an Epic?

Large user stories are called epics. They need to be broken down into manageable pieces.

What is the guiding purpose and ultimate benefit of Agile development?

Minimizing risk

Can one person be both a team's Scrum Master and Product Owner?

No, will run into conflicts. Scrum Master may not be neutral if they are acting as Product Owner. Could also have conflicts when negotiating with stakeholders. Scrum Master needs to be able to say No, but when working with Client saying No is challenging.

Describe the Sprint Retrospective.

Produces process improvement (Are meetings taking too long, are we taking on too much work?). Team identifies what did/ did not work well from a process perspective and how to address improvements in the next sprint

Which Scrum role is the "what" and "how many can we get done?"

Product Owner

What do we do with our project managers?

Retrain them to become a Scrum Master or Product Owner. There are also a lot of roles that require more of a Project Management position. For instance planning, working with outside vendors. Development just doesn't have product manager.

Which Scrum role is the "process."

Scrum Master

Should a Scrum Master take on technical tasks as a team member? How about a Product Owner?

Scrum Master can be part of team, but a Product Owner would be direct conflict to dev team. That would become a product management role. There are some issues with having the Scrum Master on the team, but they are ultimately there to help with the process. They need to make sure they are remaining neutral.

Describe Scrum.

Scrum is: 1. a framework 2. an empirical process 3. a way to expose organizational impediments. It is NOT a methodology.

Describe an empirical approach.

Start with a project goal and some priority requirements, then end with the project goal met. (Agile)

Describe a predictive approach.

Start with project plan and ALL requirements, then end with all requirements completed/met. (Waterfall)

When does Testing happen during Agile?

Testing happens during the Sprint. As things are being done, we test it. Must define a "Definition of Done" (DoD).

"Instead of BDUF ("big design up front"), inspect and adapt cycles allow the right choices to make themselves known" describes which Agile concept?

Time-boxed iterations

Describe Acceptance Criteria.

What does it mean to be done? This is acceptance criteria. 1. From the "boundaries" of the story. (What is/is not in scope) 2. Often phrased as "Done when..." 3. Help us know when story is complete 4. Come from dialog between the team and product owner in storytime and planning meetings. For this reason requires ability to ask good questions. 5. The answers need to be written down/documented! Acceptance criteria should be included on user story card.

When are bugs added to the Product Backlog?

Whenever they are not mission critical. If mission critical, handle immediately.

What is the definition of Agile?

a conceptual framework for developing new products that seeks to minimize risk and maximize value by working in time-boxed iterations and emphasizing working product as the primary measure of success.

Are Agile Methods methodologies?

agile methods are frameworks, not methodologies, they are very light-weight