scrum vocab

Scrum: (

(Noun) (1) A Rugby play in which, typically, three members of each team line up opposite one another with a group of two and a group of three players behind them, making an eight-person, three-two-three formation on each side; the ball is then rolled between the opposing front lines, the players of which stand with arms around a teammate's waist, meeting the opponent shoulder to shoulder, and attempt to kick the ball backward to a teammate. (2) (British) a place or situation of confusion and racket; hubbub.

Iteration/Sprints

: A period of time (day, week, month, Quarter, Semester) during which the Scrum team produces an increment of completed product. All system lifecycle phases (requirements, design, and test) must be completed during the iteration and then (empirically) demonstrated for the iteration to be accepted as successfully completed. At the beginning of the iteration, the business or the product owner identifies the next (highest priority) chunk of work for the team to complete. The Scrum team then estimates the level of effort and commits to completing a segment of work during the iteration. During the iteration, the team is not expected to change objectives or respond to change requests. However, at the front end of the next iteration the business or product owner is free to identify any new segment of work as the current highest priority.

Fibonacci Sequence

: A sequence of numbers in which the next number is derived by adding together the previous two (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...). The sequence is used to size stories in Agile estimation techniques such as Planning Poker

Product Owner

: In school it is the teacher, the one of the key roles in Scrum. The product owner is the primary business representative who represents the business stakeholders' "voice of the customer" and the "voice of the business" to the sprint team. The responsibilities of the Product Owner include: Establishing, nurturing, and communicating the product vision Creating and leading a team of developers to best provide value to the customer Monitoring the project against its goals and an investment vision Making decisions about when to create an official release The product owner is a role rather than a position. Consequently, several people likely participate in the product owner role for larger projects

Scrum Master

: The Scrum Master is responsible for maintaining the Scrum process and the overall health of the team. The Scrum Master assures that the team is fully functional and productive. The Scrum Master performs this role by administering the Scrum ceremonies, facilitating the organic self-organization of the team, and removing any obstacles that may be impeding the team's progress. What the Scrum Master is not: • The Scrum Master is not the task master, since the team is responsible for assigning its own tasks. • The Scrum Master is not the supervisor of the team, since the supervisor/subordinate relationship may impede the organic self-organization of the team. A good Scrum Master proactively anticipates problems, opportunities for improvement, and conducts pre-planning so the team can focus on delivering its sprint commitments. The Scrum Master also keeps the team honest regarding its commitments and helps the team identify opportunities to improve collaboration. In Scrum, when the Scrum roles are properly fulfilled there is no need for a traditional project manager to supervise the team. Nevertheless, many organizations choose to retain project managers, after they adopt Scrum, to perform functions that extend beyond the scope of the Scrum team functions.

Task Board (see Big Visible Chart/The Flip):

A chart that presents, at minimum, "to do", "in progress", and "done" columns for organizing a team's work. Some teams include their backlog as a column on the task board, while others limit it to work to be performed during the current iteration. Ideally, the task board is a physical thing, consisting of note cards or sticky notes affixed to a wall. The task board may illustrate tasks or other forms of work such as user stories. In Scrum, the task board is often used to illustrate the tasks for the current sprint, populated with tasks for the current sprint, while other Scrum teams may populate it with user stories.

Sprint Backlog

A list of features, user stories or tasks that are pulled from the product backlog for consideration for completion during the upcoming sprint. Product backlog features and user stories are broken down into tasks to form the sprint backlog during the sprint planning meeting.

Sprint Review

A meeting held at the end of each sprint in which the Scrum team shows what they accomplished during the sprint; typically this takes the form of a demo of the new features. The sprint review meeting is intentionally kept very informal. With limited time allocated for Sprint review prep. A sprint review meeting should not become a distraction or significant detour for the team; rather, it should be a natural result of the sprint.

Fail fast

A property of a system or module with respect to its response to failures. A fail-fast system is designed to immediately report at its interface any failure or condition that is likely to lead to failure."

burn down chart

A publicly displayed chart that depicts the total task hours reaming per day. it shows where the team stands regarding completing the tasks that compromise back log items that achieve the goals of the sprint. The x axis represents days in the sprint while the y axis is effort remaining (usually in ideal engineering hours)

Story/User:

A requirement, feature and/or unit of assignment/project value that can be estimated and tested. Stories describe work that must be done to create and deliver a feature for a product. Stories are the basic unit of communication, planning, and negotiation between the Scrum Team, Business Owners, and the Product Owner. Stories consist of the following elements:• A description, usually in business terms (Usually this is your embedded assessment) • A size, for rough estimation purposes, generally expressed in story points (such as 1, 2, 3, 5) • An acceptance test, giving a short description of how the story will be validated. (How do we know that you learned the objectives? Rubrics, tests, final product.)

Spike

A story or task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than implementing product features, user stories, or requirements. Sometimes a user story is generated that cannot be estimated until the development team does some actual work to resolve a technical question or a design problem. The solution is to create a "spike," which is a story whose purpose is to provide the answer or solution. Like any other story or task, the spike is then given an estimate and included in the sprint backlog

Retrospective:

A time boxed meeting held at the end of the iteration, or at the end of a release, in which the team examines its processes to determine what succeeded and what could be improved. The retrospective is key to a Scrum team's ability to "inspect and adapt" in the pursuit of "continuous improvement." The retrospective differs from other methodologies' "Lessons Learned" exercises, in that the goal is not to generate a comprehensive list of what went wrong. A positive outcome for a retrospective is to identify one or two high-priority action items the team wants to work on in the next iteration or release. The emphasis is on actionable items, not comprehensive analysis. Retrospectives may take many forms, but there is usually a facilitator, who may or may not be a member of the team, and the process is typically broken down into three phases: data gathering, data analysis, and action items.

Stakeholder:

Anyone external to the team with a vested interest in the outcome of the team's work. In education, it could be the administration, Superintendent, Schoolboard, parents, teachers, Department of Education, etc.

Product:

Broadly speaking, product refers to a collection of tangible and intangible features that are integrated and packaged. In school terms it is the major assignment/project.

Sprint Backlog Meeting

Each sprint begins with a two-part sprint planning meeting, the activity that prioritizes and identifies stories and concrete tasks for the next sprint. As a general rule of thumb, the number of weeks in a sprint multiplied by two hours equals the total length of the spring planning meeting. • Part one of the sprint planning meeting is a review of the product backlog. This is when the product owner describes what needs to be built for the next sprint. During this part of the meeting, it is not uncommon for the team to discuss the sprint objectives with the product owner, and ask clarifying questions and remove ambiguity. • During part two of the sprint planning meeting, the team decides how the work will be built. The team will begin decomposing the product backlog items into work tasks and estimating these in hours. The product owner must be available during this meeting but does not have to be in the room. The output of the second planning meeting is the Sprint Backlog

Impediment/Obstacle

In Scrum: Anything that prevents a team member from performing work as efficiently as possible is an impediment. Each team member has an opportunity to announce impediments during the daily standup meeting. The Scrum Master is charged with ensuring impediments are removed. Scrum Masters often arrange sidebar meetings when impediments cannot be resolved on the spot in the daily Scrum meeting.

Scrum:

Scrum is an agile software development model based on multiple small teams working in an intensive and interdependent manner. The term is named for the scrum (or scrummage) formation in rugby, which is used to restart the game after an event that causes play to stop, such as an infringement. A framework for the iterative development of complex products. Scrum is the most widely recognized Agile framework. Scrum is comprised of a series of short iterations - called sprints - each of which ends with the delivery of an increment of working software. 1. The framework is comprised of: Three roles: Product Owner Scrum Master (Scrum) Team 2. Four ceremonies: Daily Standup Meeting Sprint Planning Meeting Sprint Review Retrospective 3. Three artifacts: Burndown charts Product backlog Sprint backlog

Pig:

Scrum slang. Someone who is responsible for doing a task on an active iteration. It comes from the joke, "A chicken and a pig talk about breakfast. The chicken says, 'Let's have bacon and eggs.' The pig replies, 'That's fine for you. You are just making a contribution, but I have to be fully committed.'" Pigs are actively involved in the project

Task

Tasks are descriptions of the actual work that an individual or pair does in order to complete a story. They are manageable, doable, and trackable units of work. Typically, there are several tasks per story. Tasks have the following attributes, and all tasks must be verified complete - not just "done": • A description of the work to be performed • An estimate of how much time the work will take (hours, days) • An owner, who may or may not be pre-assigned • An exit criteria and verification method (test or Rubric) • An indication of who will be responsible for the verification

Sprint:

The Scrum term for iteration. The sprint/Iteration starts with a sprint planning meeting. At the end of the sprint there is a sprint review meeting, followed by a sprint retrospective meeting

Shipping Date

The date the final project is due and ships (turned into the product owner)

Scrum Team:

The scrum team is a cross-functional group that is responsible for delivering the product. The team usually includes people skilled to understand what is needed... The scrum team is encouraged to be self-organizing and to take collective responsibility for all work commitments and outcomes. Scrum teams respond to requirements (often presented as user stories) by collectively defining their tasks, task assignments, and level of effort estimates. In scrum, the team is one of three roles; the other two being Scrum Master and product owner.

Velocity:

Velocity measures how much work a team can complete in the iteration. Velocity is often measured in stories or story points. Velocity may also measure tasks in hours or an equivalent unit. Velocity is used to measure how long it will take a particular team to deliver future outcomes by extrapolating on the basis of its prior performance. This works in Scrum development, when work is comprehensively completed after the iteration.

backlog

a collection of tasks the sprint team will work on at some point in the future. Either the Product owner has not prioritized them or has assigned the lower priority

daily scrum

stand up meeting

chicken

they can observe team meeting but can not vote or talk

done

what was to be done has been done