scrum

Burn Down Chart

A burn down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time. The outstanding work (or backlog) is often on the vertical axis, with time along the horizontal.

User Story

A feature that is added to the backlog is commonly referred to as a story and has a specific suggested structure. The structure of a story is: "As a <user type> I want to <do some action> so that <desired result>" This is done so that the development team can identify the user, action and required result in a request and is a simple way of writing requests that anyone can understand.

Scrum of Scrums

A meeting held each day, normally after the daily scrum. These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration. A designated person from each team attends.

Sprint Goal

A sprint goal is a short, one- or two-sentence, description of what the team plans to achieve during the sprint. It is written collaboratively by the team and the product owner. E.g. "Implement basic shopping cart functionality including add, remove, and update quantities."

Spike (Prototype / Investigation)

A time boxed period used to research a concept and/or create a simple prototype. Unlike sprint commitments, spikes may or may not deliver tangible, shippable, valuable functionality. Spikes are often introduced before the delivery of large epics or user stories in order to secure budget, expand knowledge, and/or produce a proof of concept. Could also be included as part of a sprint if the team is large enough.

Task Board

A way of helping to visualise the state of the stories and associated tasks in a sprint. Rows list user stories / goals and columns place associated tasks according to status such as 'to do', 'in progress' and 'done'.

Efficiency Factor

Added to some burn down charts to allow for consistent inaccurate estimations. If the team consistently under / over estimates during a sprint by a factor, this can be multiplied into the burn-down chart for the following sprint to give a more accurate prediction.

Sprint Retrospective

All team members reflect on the past sprint; Make continuous process improvements; Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective: What went well during the sprint? What could be improved in the next sprint? *Three-hour time limit*

Epic

An epic is a group of related stories, mainly used in product roadmaps and the backlog for features that have not yet been analyzed enough to break it down into it's component stories, which should be done before bringing it into a sprint so to reduce uncertainty. (similar to summary task that is yet to be broken down).

Business Value & Estimated Effort

Business value of each listed item is the responsibility of the Product Owner. The estimated effort to complete each backlog item is, however, determined by the Development Team.

Fibonacci Sequence

By definition, the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...

Product Backlog

Contains Product Backlog Items that are ordered by the Product Owner based on considerations like risk, business value, dependencies, date needed, etc. It is open and editable by anyone, but the Product Owner is ultimately responsible for ordering the stories on the backlog for the Development Team. The product backlog contains rough estimates of both business value and development effort which help gauge the timeline and priority.

Abnormal Termination

For instance, management may wish to cancel a sprint if external circumstances *negate the value of the sprint goal*. If a sprint is abnormally terminated, the next step is to conduct a new Sprint planning meeting, where the reason for the termination is reviewed.

INVEST

Guidance for choosing a user story for the backlog : independent, negotiable, valuable, estimatable, small, testable requirement.

ROI & Backlog Priority

If the "add spellcheck" and "add table support" features have the same business value, the one with the smallest development effort will probably have higher priority, because the ROI (Return on Investment) is higher.

Backlog Grooming Meeting

Meetings should 3 be longer than an hour Meeting does not include breaking stories into tasks The team can decide how many meetings are needed per week.

Managers

People who control the environment in which the scrum development takes place.

Planning Poker

Planning Poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based technique for *estimating effort for user stories*, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of user stories in software development. Estimating is initially anonymous to avoid undue influence / bias. Estimates tend to be less optimistic and more accurate than task estimates mechanically combined (via some formula).

Story Points

Relates to an abstract point system, used to discuss the difficulty of the story, without assigning actual hours. The most common scale used is a rounded Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100).

Product Owner

Represents the stakeholders and is the voice of the customer. He or she is *accountable* for ensuring that the team delivers value to the business. Writes and Prioritises customer-centric *user stories* to add to the product backlog. There should be one product owner per team.

Sprint Review Meeting

Review the work that was completed and not completed; Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. *the demo*); Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated; *Four-hour time limit* The success of the sprint will later be assessed during the Sprint Review Meeting against the sprint goal, rather than against each specific item selected from the product backlog.

Core Team Roles (Pigs)

Roles that involved with producing the product (*pigs*, committed to putting their bacon on the line !). Includes Product Owner, Development Team, Scrum Master.

scrum & uncertainty

Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

Co-location and self-organisation

Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication between all team members and disciplines in the project.

scrum

Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development method for managing software projects and product or application development. It focuses on project management institutions where it is difficult to plan ahead. *not an acronym*.

Sprint Planning Meeting

Select what work is to be done; Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire team; Identify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint *Eight-hour time limit* (1st four hours) Entire team : dialog for prioritising the Product Backlog; (2nd four hours) Development Team : hashing out a plan for the Sprint, resulting in the Sprint Backlog

Servant leadership

Servant-leaders achieve results for their organizations by giving priority attention to the needs of their colleagues and those they serve. Servant Leadership can be most likely associated with the participative management style. the practice of a participative leadership style involves employees in decision-making. More extensive tasks are delegated.

Planning Poker Cards

Sets of cards with estimation numbers on, one deck per person. Sometimes use a Fibonacci sequence to represent the relative uncertainty of estimating larger numbers.

Sprint

Sprints last between one week and one month,[1] and are a "timeboxed" (i.e. restricted to a specific duration) effort of a constant length. A sprint is the basic unit of development.

Historic Sprint Velocity

The Development Team should keep in mind the velocity of its previous Sprints (total story points completed from each of the last sprints stories) when selecting stories/features for the new sprint, and use this number as a guide line of how much "effort" they can complete.

Ancillary Team Roles (Chickens)

The ancillary roles in Scrum teams are those with no formal role and infrequent involvement in the Scrum process (only during sprint reviews) —but nonetheless, they must be taken into account. Includes stakeholders such as customers and managers.

Definition of Done (DoD)

The exit-criteria to determine whether a product backlog item is complete. In many cases the DoD requires that all regression tests should be successful.

Increment

The increment is the sum of all the Product Backlog Items completed during a sprint and all previous sprints. At the end of a sprint, the Increment must be done according to the Scrum Team's definition of done. The increment must be in usable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to actually release it. Ie. the increment is the working piece of software.

Daily Scrum

The meeting starts precisely on time; All are welcome, but normally only the core roles speak; The meeting length is set (timeboxed) to 15 minutes; The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day

Sprint Backlog

The sprint backlog is the list of work the Development Team must address during the next sprint. The list is derived by selecting stories/features from the top of the product backlog until the Development Team feels it has enough work to fill the sprint.

Sprint & Release Burn-down Charts

The sprint burn down chart is a publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the sprint backlog. the release burndown chart that shows the amount of work left to complete the target commitment for a Product Release (normally spanning through multiple iterations)

Stakeholders

The stakeholders are the customers, vendors. They are people who enable the project and for whom the project produces the agreed-upon benefit[s] that justify its production. They are only directly involved in the process during the sprint reviews.

Task Breakdown

The stories/features are broken down into tasks by the Development Team, which, as a best practice, should normally be between four and sixteen hours of work. With this level of detail the Development Team understands exactly what to do, and potentially, anyone can pick a task from the list. Tasks on the sprint backlog are never assigned; rather, tasks are signed up for by the team members as needed during the daily scrum, according to the set priority and the Development Team member skills. This promotes self-organization of the Development Team, and developer buy-in.

Velocity

The total effort a team is capable of in a sprint. The number is derived by adding all the story points from the last sprint's stories/features. This is a guideline for the team and assists them in understanding how many stories they can do in a sprint. [Note could also be a rational number, effort / time].

Backlog Grooming: storytime

This is the process of estimating the existing backlog using effort, refining the acceptance criteria for individual stories, and breaking larger stories into smaller stories.

Planning Poker Procedure

User story explained by product manager; estimators can discuss scope but not numbers; estimators lay down cards and reveal them all at once; high/ low estimators justify choices; Consensus is moderated with bias towards potential owner of work.

Scrum of Scrums Questions

What has your team done since we last met? What will your team do before we meet again? Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way? Are you about to put something in another team's way?

Daily Scrum Questions

What have you done since yesterday?; What are you planning to do today?; Any impediments/stumbling blocks? It is the role of the Scrum Master to facilitate resolution of these impediments, although the resolution should occur *outside* the Daily Scrum itself to keep it under 15 minutes.

Scrum Master

accountable for removing impediments to the ability of the team to deliver the sprint goal/deliverables. The Scrum Master is not the team leader, but acts as a *buffer* between the team and any distracting influences. The Scrum Master ensures that the Scrum process is used as intended. The Scrum Master is the enforcer of rules. A key part of the Scrum Master's role is to *protect* the Development Team and keep it *focused* on the tasks at hand.

Development Team

responsible for delivering potentially shippable product increments at the end of each Sprint. A Development Team is made up of 3-9 people with cross-functional skills who do the actual work (analyse, design, develop, test, technical communication, document, etc.). The Development Team in Scrum is self-organizing, even though they may interface with project management organizations (PMOs).