Agile Concepts Flashcards
Describe SAFe
Lean/Agile at the Enterprise Level
Scrum
- Compact, Self-organizing, cross-functional teams
- Adopted at the team level
- Few departments and < 100 employees
SAFe
- Large, multi-geography teams
- Adopted by the entire organization or enterprise
- Program and Portfolio Management
Burndown
- A visual representation of the work left to do on a project vs the time left to do it.
- Work Remaining / Average Velocity = Days to Complete
What issues do flat lines sometimes indicate in a burndown chart?
- Sprints are not being closed on time
- Could mean tasks are more complicated than initially anticipated
- Tasks could be waiting for other waiting tasks
What is the difference between Product, Release and Sprint Backlogs?
- Product Backlog - Features to implement but not yet prioritized
- Release Backlog - Features included in a particular release
- Sprint Backlog - User stories to complete during a sprint
Scrum Artifact
Scrum Artifacts provide key information that the Scrum Team and the stakeholders need to be aware of for understanding the product under development, the activities being planned, and the activities done in the project
Examples
- Product Backlog
- Sprint Backlog
- Software Increment
What values are on the Y access of a burndown chart?
Remaining Work, expressed as story points, task hours or story sizes
How is a burnup chart different from a burndown chart?
Time is shown on the Y access and work remaining on the X access.
Acceptance Criteria
A checklist for an individual user story.
Example
- User can only submit a form by filling in all required fields
- User will receive a notification e-mail after successful registration
- Submissions from the same IP can only be made every 30 seconds
- All functional and unit tests have passed
Definition of Done
A checklist that the product increment must meet to be considered shippable.
Validates
- Functionality
- Design
- Build
- Integration
- Testing
- Documentation Completeness
Definition of Ready (Stories)
Stories that have been agreed upon as ready by the team. Typically, using the INVEST model - Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable
Product Vision
How the sum of the product increments support the organization and/or stakeholders
Focus Factor
- A calculation that can be used for newly formed teams that do not have a velocity history,
- Expression of the amount of productive work a dev can likely accomplish in a week
- 35 Man Hours * 60% focus factor = 21 hours cap
Milestone (as it relates to Agile projects)
A project event with zero days duration that represents an achievement. such as phase start/stop or business goal
What is the relationship between Milestones, Releases and Sprints?
- Sprints and Releases roll up to milestones
- Sprint refers to a time frame used to achieve one or more goals
- Release defines a product increment and it’s timing
Backlog Refinement
An acitivity in a sprint planning where the PO and the Dev Teams add granularity to the backlog
Release Planning
- Visualization of increment release cadence from 3-12 sprints
- Reflects expectations about which features are to be implemented and in what order
- Different Types
- Feature Based
- Date Based
- Feature and Date Based
Relationship between Release Planning and CI/CD?
In CI/CD, releases are done after each feature is completed.
When is Release Planning Done in Scrum?
At the beginning in the product planning stage (AKA Sprint Zero)
Refinements are also done every sprint as part of sprint review or in planning for the next sprint.
Inputs to Release Planning
Team Velocity range
product vision
high level product backlog
product roadmap (possibly)
Scrum Artifacts
- Represent work or value
- Maximize transparency of key information
- Product Backlog
- Sprint Backlog
- Product Increment
Scrum Events
Opportunity to inspect and adapt scrum artifacts
- Sprint
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
Spike
- Technical Investigation Story
- Created to research a question or resolve a problem.
- Focused on finding answers
- Not directly part of a shippable increment
Sprint Backlog
- An overview of the development work to realize a sprint goal.
- A forecast of functionality and the work needed to deliver it
Sprint Goal
- An expression of the purpose of a sprint
- Why (goal)
- What (Selected PBIs)
- How (Plan for delivering the increment)
Sprint Planning Process
- <= 8 hour timebox, first day of sprint
- PO presents PBI wishlist
- Team discussed and negotiates
- Team commits to the work
- PBIs broken down into tasks
- Team creates definition of done for the sprint
- Sprint Goal is documented
Sprint Retrospective
<=3 hours time to review and plan for improvements for the next sprint
Sprint Review
<= 4 hours
Demonstration by the team for stakeholders to inspect the increment
Technical Debt
Overhead of maintaining the product often caused by poor design decisions
Describe Managing multiple Agile Teams
Situation - Satya Demo
- Single Product (demo of three techs)
- Multiple features (object recognition, voice to text, translation, etc.)
- Seperate teams specializing in each
- Challenge - time the release cadence
Action - Azure Teams and Shared PO
- Seperate teams in ADO
- Shared Product Backlog
- Seperate Sprint Backlogs
- Tried to synchronize release cadence
Result
- Combined visibility and tracking for entire team
- Seperation of concerns
- Close Release Timing
What are the elements of a Good User Story?
Follows the INVEST model
What is INVEST?
Framework for writing good user stories
- Independent - uncoupled from other stories
- Negotiable - Teams decide how to implement
- Valuable - Each has a unit of value to end users
- Estimable - Easy to make time estimates
- Small - Its lifecycle fits into a single sprint
- Testable - Clear acceptance criteria
What are the overall benefits of an Agile approach?
- Enables adapation to changing landscape
- Keeps teams focused on business value
- Enables creativity
- Inspires teams with incremental wins
Story Mapping
- Scrum tends to push teams into flat backlogs of features but we can lose perspective on the “why” of the product.
- About “Framing the journey” with user activities (Epics) in a rough order over time that creates a “backbone”
- User activities are refines into Tasks (stories)
- Stories are broken down into sub-tasks
What are the benefits of framing the journey with story mapping over just a flat backlog?
By starting with user activities and personas, it helps teams maintain perspective on what the successful product is meant to do.
The key benefit is that the whole team is more engaged with the success of the product.
When does Sprint Planning Happen?
The first day of a new sprint
What are the key elements of a good sprint goal?
- Actual goal Statment
- Method employed to reach the goal
- Metrics to determine if the goal has been met
When does a Sprint end?
When the timebox is done
Does a Product increment need to be ready for release by the end of a sprint?
Yes. Does not have to be released but needs to be ready
When does the next sprint start?
Immediately after the conclusion of the current sprint. (official Scrum)
When is the Product Backlog Created?
Scrum Alliance does not identify a specific period of time
This should happen in Sprint Zero (the same timeframe the story mapping would be done)
What events are contained in sprints?
Technically, all of them
- Story Mapping (sprint zero)
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Scrum
- Retrospectives
- Reviews
When is it OK to cancel a Sprint?
When the PO says the Sprint goal is obsolete. Typically, this means that the goal of the sprint no longer supports the business value initially intended for that sprint
What is the overall purpose of the Sprint Review?
The Scrum Team presents the results of their work to key stakeholders and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed.
Who are the stakeholders that are absolutely required in the sprint review?
Product Owner
Dev Team
What are the key activities in the sprint review?
- Adjusting the Product Backlog to meet new opportunities
- Demonstrating the work that meets the DOD
- Answering questions about the increment
- Collaborating on what to do next
What are the key questions in a Sprint Retrospective?
How were our interactions?
Were our processes and tools effective?
Were our DODs effective?
What changes will be most helpful?
What were the challenges and were they solved?
Document Format for the Sprint Retrospective
What should happen to work that does not meet the DOD for the current sprint?
It should be put back in the backlog for consideration in the next sprint
