Agile - Alvin Vocabulary

Question 1

Agile

Answer 1

Iterative approach to deliver a project, which focuses on delivering in INCREMENTAL steps.

Question 2

Agile Release Planning

Answer 2

Gives a high level overview and timeline of the software’s release schedule, based upon the established Product Roadmap.

Question 3

BurnDOWN Chart

Answer 3

A visual chart which tracks the REMAINING WORK throughout the number of story points completed in an iteration, and is used ot analyze the team’s velocity and completion date for remaining work.

Question 4

BurnUP Chart

Answer 4

Visual graph that shows the work that has already been completed to release the product.

Question 5

Caves and Commons

Answer 5

A team’s workspace and common area that facilitates collaboration, colocation, and a quiet environment for th eteam to work in.

Question 6

Continuous Integration

Answer 6

Frequently incorporating the work in to the entire whole and retesting the product to confirm that the product still functions as intended.

Question 7

Cumulative Flow Diagram

Answer 7

A stacked area graph used to track your team’s work which is being completed on the project, and helps identify bottlenecks.

Question 8

Daily Standup / Daily Scrum

Answer 8

Daily meeting facilitated by the scrum master to discuss
1. What did I do since the last standup
2. What is the plan fo rworkign on today
3. What impediments am I experiencing?

Question 9

Flow Based Agile

Answer 9

Team pulls features from a backlog, based upon the team’s available capacity. Features become available as soon as they are ready instead of from a timebox schedule.

Question 10

Iteration Based Agile

Answer 10

Team works in iterations to deliver completed features. Iterations are of equal durations.

Question 11

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Answer 11

A product which has MINIMAL FEATURES, which allows the team to iterate quickly and obtain customer feedback as early as possible.

Question 12

Mobbing

Answer 12

The team members work together and contribute towards completing a specific task. Drives increased focus and completing the work. Prevents hand offs and waste. Next level version of ‘swarming’

Question 13

Pair Programming

Answer 13

One programmer writes the code, while another inspects the code (while it’s being written). Allows for any issues to be detected while code is being created.

Question 14

Planning Poker

Answer 14

Estimation technique used during spring planning to estimate effort for a User Story. Uses playing cards with numbers written on them, based on the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8…)

Question 15

Product Backlog

Answer 15

List of all the work which needs to be completed to finish creating the product.

Product Backlog vs Sprint Backlog

Question 16

Product Owner

Answer 16

Scrum team
Represents the Voice of the Customer on a project and is the one who understands the customer’s needs and requirements. Key responsibility is prioritizing the backlog.

Question 17

Scrum Master

Answer 17

Person responsible for leading the team to implement the Scrum process. He or she should be fluent and knowledgable in what’s entailed with using Scrum. Acts as a servant leader to remove any roadblocks the team experiences.

Question 18

Spike

Answer 18

Short time-boxed window to ‘experiment’ with technical options and gain more knowledge. For example, risk-based spikes (to investigate & remove an issue) or archtectural spikes (team writes enough code to explore the use of a new technology)

Question 19

Sprint

Answer 19

Time-boxed period of 1-4 weeks in which the team finishes the work found within the Sprint Backlog.

Question 20

Sprint Backlog

Answer 20

Scrum artifact that lists features to develop for the upcoming sprint. Consists of prioritized items pulled from the Product Backlog.

Question 21

Sprint Planning Meeting

Answer 21

Scrum
Planning meeting used to determine which features will be performed in the upcoming sprint. This results in the development of a Sprint Backlog.

Question 22

Sprint Retrospective

Answer 22

Meeting used to review the team’s performance and determine what went right, what went wrong, and to conduct a ‘lessons learned’. This is typically held at the end of every sprint.

*not use to provide customer or product owner feedback about the product increment - focused on improving the scrum process and team performance for future sprints.
** vs sprint review

Question 23

Sprint Review

Answer 23

At the end of each sprint, the customer performs an inspection to review the product demo (also know as the product increment) which was developed during the sprint. Customer and Product Owner review to determine if it meets the user needs.

Question 24

Story Point

Answer 24

Metric used to establish the level of effort and difficulty to fully develop a User Story. What is the amount of effort and difficulty with completing a task.

Question 25

Swarming

Answer 25

An instance in which the team focus work together to resolve a task, issue, or a roadblock.

• vs mobbing (need more info)

Question 26

Team Velocity

Answer 26

A term used to estimate the team’s speed - how much work can be completed during a Sprint?

Question 27

Technical Debt

Answer 27

Backlog of work caused by NOT performing regular clean up and poor coding. This is solved through a technique called Refactoring.

Question 28

Refactoring

Answer 28

Disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior. It encourages and supports incremental design and implementation, the conversion of proofs of concept and early code into more suitable, stable code.

Question 29

T-Shirt Sizing

Answer 29

Estimation technique used during Sprint planning to estimate how long a story will take. You assign a T-shirt size to each fetaure that represents the smallest to largest amount of work.

Question 30

User Story

Answer 30

A brief description of a feature described form the perspective of the person requesting the capability.

Ex: As a customer, I want to access the Shopping Cart so I can make purchases in the mobile app.

Question 31

Waterfall

Answer 31

Predictive / Traditional
Used when projects flow sequentially, planned in detail in the beginning before any work takes place.