SCRUM Glossary 1

Product Goal

The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against. The Product Goal is in the Product Backlog. The rest of the Product Backlog emerges to define "what" will fulfill the Product Goal.

Values

When the values of commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect are embodied and lived by the Scrum Team, the *Scrum pillars* of transparency, inspection, and adaptation *come to life* and *build trust* for everyone. The Scrum Team members learn and explore those values as they work with the Scrum events, roles and artifacts. Download the Scrum Values Poster

Scrum

a framework to support teams in complex product development. Scrum consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, artifacts, and rules, as defined in the Scrum GuideTM.

Stakeholder

a person external to the Scrum Team with a specific interest in and knowledge of a product that is required for incremental discovery. Represented by the Product Owner and actively engaged with the Scrum Team at Sprint Review.

Scrum Board

a physical board to visualize information for and by the Scrum Team, often used to manage Sprint Backlog. Scrum boards are an optional implementation within Scrum to make information visible.

Scrum Team

a self-organizing team consisting of a Product Owner, Development Team and Scrum Master.

Scrum Values

a set of fundamental values and qualities underpinning the Scrum framework; commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage.

Engineering standards

a shared set of development and technology standards that a Development Team applies to create releasable Increments of software.

Self-organization

the management principle that teams autonomously organize their work. Self-organization happens within boundaries and against given goals. Teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.

Product Backlog

A Scrum Artifact that consists of an ordered list of the work to be done in order to create, maintain and sustain a product. Managed by the Product Owner.

Burn-Up Chart

Chart that shows completed functionality over time. Progress trends up as stories are completed (value accumulated). Does not show work-in-progress, so it is not an accurate way to predict end of project

Product Owner

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 Development Team(s).

Scrum Master

Role within a Scrum Team accountable for guiding, coaching, teaching and assisting a Scrum Team and its environments in a proper understanding and use of Scrum.

Development Team

Role within a Scrum Team accountable for managing, organizing and doing all development work required to create a releasable Increment of product every Sprint.

Increment

Scrum Artifact that defines the complete and valuable work produced by the Development Team during a Sprint. The sum of all Increments form a product.

Sprint Backlog

Scrum Artifact that provides an overview of the development work to realize a Sprint's goal, typically a forecast of functionality and the work needed to deliver that functionality. Managed by the Development Team.

Daily Scrum

Scrum Event that is a 15-minute time-boxed event held each day for the Development Team. The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. At it, the Development Team plans 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.

Sprint Retrospective

Scrum Event that is set to a time-box of 3 hours, or less, to end a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team to inspect the past Sprint and plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.

Sprint Review

Scrum Event that is set to a time-boxed of 4 hours, or less, to conclude the development work of a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team and the stakeholders to inspect the Increment of product resulting from the Sprint, assess the impact of the work performed on overall progress and update the Product backlog in order to maximize the value of the next period.

Sprint Planning

Scrum Event that is time-boxed to 8 hours, or less, to start a Sprint. It serves for the Scrum Team to inspect the work from the Product Backlog that's most valuable to be done next and design that work into Sprint backlog.

Sprint

Scrum Event that is time-boxed to one month or less, that serves as a container for the other Scrum events and activities. Sprints are done consecutively, without intermediate gaps.

Coherence

The quality of the relationship between certain Product Backlog items which may make them worthy of consideration as a whole.

Ready

a shared understanding by the Product Owner and the Development Team regarding the preferred level of description of Product Backlog items introduced at Sprint Planning.

Definition of Done

a shared understanding of expectations that the Increment must live up to in order to be releasable into production. Managed by the Development Team.

Sprint Goal

a short expression of the purpose of a Sprint, often a business problem that is addressed. Functionality might be adjusted during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal.

Velocity

an optional, but often used, indication of the amount of Product Backlog turned into an Increment of product during a Sprint by a Scrum Team, tracked by the Development Team for use within the Scrum Team.

Empiricism

process control type in which only the past is accepted as certain and in which decisions are based on observation, experience and experimentation. Empiricism has three pillars: transparency, inspection and adaptation.

Burn Down Chart

shows what is expected to stay in backlog x-axis: time y-axis: work remaining - Trend line would expect to be falling as project progresses - can be used for Sprint or Product Backlogs

Product Backlog refinement

the activity in a Sprint through which the Product Owner and the Development Teams add granularity to the Product Backlog.

Scrum Guide™

the definition of Scrum, written and provided by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, co-creators of Scrum. This definition consists of Scrum's roles, events, artifacts, and the rules that bind them together.

Emergence

the process of the coming into existence or prominence of new facts or new knowledge of a fact, or knowledge of a fact becoming visible unexpectedly.

Forecast (of functionality)

the selection of items from the Product Backlog a Development Team deems feasible for implementation in a Sprint.

Technical Debt

the typically unpredictable overhead of maintaining the product, often caused by less than ideal design decisions, contributing to the total cost of ownership. May exist unintentionally in the Increment or introduced purposefully to realize value earlier.