Agile Definitions.Glossary Flashcards
Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)
A method of collaboratively creating acceptance test criteria that are used to create acceptance tests before delivery begins. Moves the testing focus to the business requirements
Agile Life Cycle
An approach that is both iterative and incremental to refine work items and deliver frequently.
Agile Practitioner
A person embracing the agile mindset who collaborates with like-minded colleagues in cross-functional teams. Also referred to as agilist.
Agile Unified Process
A simplistic and understandable approach to developing business application software using agile techniques and concepts. It is a simplified version of the Rational Unified Process (RUP)
Anti-Pattern
A known, flawed pattern of work that is not advisable.
Automated Code Quality Analysis
The scripted testing of codebase for bugs and vulnerabilities
Backlog Refinement
The progressive elaboration of project requirements and/or the ongoing activity in which the team collaboratively reviews, updates, and writes requirements to satisfy the need of the customer request.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
A system design and validation practice that uses test- first principles and English-like scripts.
Blended Agile
Two or more agile frameworks, methods, elements, or practices used together such as Scrum practiced in combination with XP and Kanban Method.
Broken Comb
Refers to a person with various depths of specialization in multiple skills required by the team. Also known as Paint Drip. See also T-shaped and I-shaped
Burndown Chart
A graphical representation of the work remaining versus the time left in a timebox,
Burnup Chart
A graphical representation of the work completed toward the release of a product.
Business Requirement Documents (BRD)
Listing of all requirements for a specific project.
Cadence
A rhythm of execution. See also Timebox
Collective Code Ownership
project acceleration and collaboration technique whereby any team member is authorized to modify any project work product or deliverable, thus emphasizing team-wide ownership and accountability
Continuous Delivery
The practice of delivering feature increments immediately to customers, often through the use of small batches of work and automation technology
Continuous Integration
A practice in which each team member’s work products are frequently integrated and validated with one another
Cross-Functional Team
A team that includes practitioners with all the skills necessary to deliver valuable product increments
Crystal Family of Methodologies
A collection of lightweight agile software development methods focused on adaptability to a particular circumstance. Is based on the team size for the different crystal colors / methodology
Clear - for teams of 8 or fewer people.
Yellow - for teams of 10-20 people.
Orange - for teams of 20-50 people.
Red - for teams of 50-100 people
Daily Scrum
A brief, daily collaboration meeting in which the team reviews progress from the previous day, declares intentions for the current day, and highlights any obstacles encountered or anticipated. Also known as daily standup
Definition of Done (DoD)
team’s checklist of all the criteria required to be met so that a deliverable can be considered ready for customer use
Definition of Ready (DoR)
A team’s checklist for a user-centric requirement that has all the information the team needs to be able to begin working on it.
DevOps
A collection of practices for creating a smooth flow of delivery by improving collaboration between development and operations staff
Disciplined Agile (DA)
is a process decision framework that puts individuals first and offers only lightweight guidance around incremental and iterative solution delivery according to the unique needs of each specific project. As a people-first agile framework, DA is in some ways similar to the Crystal method. In fact, DA is designed to be a hybrid approach combining elements of XP, Scrum, Kanban, and other methodologies.
Double Loop Learning
A process that challenges underlying values and assumptions in order to better elaborate root causes and devise improved countermeasures rather than focusing only on symptoms.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).
focuses on the full project lifecycle, DSDM (formally known as Dynamic System Development Method) was created in 1994, after project managers using RAD (Rapid Application Development) sought more governance and discipline to this new iterative way of working.
DSDM’s success is due to the philosophy “that any project must be aligned to clearly defined strategic goals and focus upon early delivery of real benefits to the business.”
known best because of its emphasis on constraint-driven delivery
Evolutionary Value Delivery (EVO)
Openly credited as the first agile method that contains a specific component no other methods have: the focus on delivering multiple measurable value requirements to stakeholders
eXtreme Programming
An agile software development method that leads to higher quality software, a greater responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and more frequent releases in shorter cycles.
Feature-Driven Development
A lightweight agile software development method driven from the perspective of features valued by clients
Fit for Purpose
A product that is suitable for its intended purpose
Fit for Use
A product that is usable in its current form to achieve its intended purpose
Flow Master.
The coach for a team and service request manager working in a continuous flow or Kanban context. Equivalent to Scrum Master
Framework
A basic system or structure of ideas or facts that support an approach
Functional Requirement
A specific behavior that a product or service should perform
Functional Specification
A specific function that a system or application is required to perform. Typically represented in a functional specifications document
Hoshin Kanri.
strategy or policy deployment method
IDEAL.
An organizational improvement model that is named for the five phases it describes: initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting, and learning
Impact Mapping.
A strategic planning technique that acts as a roadmap to the organization while building new products.
Impediment.
An obstacle that prevents the team from achieving its objectives. Also known as a blocker.
Increment.
A functional, tested, and accepted deliverable that is a subset of the overall project outcome.
Incremental Life Cycle
An approach that provides finished deliverables that the customer may be able to use immediately.
Information Radiator
A visible, physical display that provides information to the rest of the organization enabling up-to-the-minute knowledge sharing without having to disturb the team
I-shaped.
Refers to a person with a single deep area of specialization and no interest or skill in the rest of the skills required by the team. See also T-Shaped and Broken Comb
Iteration.
A timeboxed cycle of development on a product or deliverable in which all of the work that is needed to deliver value is performed
Iterative Life Cycle
An approach that allows feedback for unfinished work to improve and modify that work.
Kaizen Events
Events aimed at improvement of the system
Kanban Board
A visualization tool that enables improvements to the flow of work by making bottlenecks and work quantities visible
Kanban Method
An agile method inspired by the original Kanban inventory control system and used specifically for knowledge work
Kanban is a lean method tomanage work.
* This approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of systemlevel bottlenecks.
* Work items are visualized to give participants a view of progress and process, from start to finish.
* Work is pulled as capacity permits, rather than work being pushed into the process when requested
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS).
Large-Scale Scrum is a product development framework that extends Scrum with scaling guidelines while preserving the original purposes of Scrum.
Lean Software Development (LSD).
Lean software development is an adaptation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain and is based on a set of principles and practices for achieving quality, speed, and customer alignment
The Lean approach is also often referred to as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) strategy, in which a team releases a bare-minimum version of its product to the market, learns from users what they like, don’t like and want to be added, and then iterates based on this feedback
Life Cycle
The process through which a product is imagined, created, and put into use.
Mobbing.
technique in which multiple team members focus simultaneously and coordinate their contributions on a particular work item
Organizational Bias
The preferences of an organization on a set of scales characterized by the following core values: exploration versus execution, speed versus stability, quantity versus quality, and flexibility versus predictability
Organizational Change Management
A comprehensive, cyclic, and structured approach for transitioning individuals, groups, and organizations from the current state to a future state with intended business benefits.
Paint-Drip
See Broken Comb.
Pairing.
See Pair Work
Pair Programming
Pair work that is focused on programming
Pair Work
technique of pairing two team members to work simultaneously on the same work item.
Personas.
An archetype user representing a set of similar end users described with their goals, motivations, and representative personal characteristics
Pivot.
A planned course correction designed to test a new hypothesis about the product or strategy
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA).
An iterative management method used in organizations to facilitate the control and continual improvement of processes and products.
Plan-Driven Approach.
See Predictive Approach
Predictive Approach
An approach to work management that utilizes a work plan and management of that work plan throughout the life cycle of a project
Predictive Life Cycle
A more traditional approach, with the bulk of planning occurring up- front, then executing in a single pass; a sequential process
Product Backlog
An ordered list of user-centric requirements that a team maintains for a product.
Product Owner
A person responsible for maximizing the value of the product and who is ultimately responsible and accountable for the end product that is built. See also Service Request Manager.
Progressive Elaboration
The iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a proje management plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available.
Refactoring.
A product quality technique whereby the design of a product is improved by enhancing its maintainability and other desired attributes without altering its expected behavior.
Retrospective.
A regularly occurring workshop in which participants explore their work and results in order to improve both process and product
Rolling Wave Planning
An iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®)
A knowledge base of integrated patterns for enterprise- scale lean–agile development.
Scrum.
An agile framework for developing and sustaining complex products, with specific roles, events, and artifacts
Scrumban.
management framework that emerges when teams employ Scrum as the chosen way of working and use the Kanban Method as a lens through which to view, understand, and continuously improve how they work
Scrum Board
An information radiator that is utilized to manage the product and sprint backlogs and show the flow of work and its bottlenecks
Scrum Master
The coach of the development team and process owner in the Scrum framework. Removes obstacles, facilitates productive events and defends the team from disruptions. See also Flow Master
Scrum of Scrums
technique to operate Scrum at scale for multiple teams working on the same product, coordinating discussions of progress on their interdependencies, and focusing on how to integrate the delivery of software, especially in areas of overlap
Scrum Team
Describes the combination of development team, scrum master, and process owner used in Scrum.
Self-Organizing Team
A cross-functional team in which people fluidly assume leadership as needed to achieve the team’s objectives
Servant Leadership
The practice of leading through service to the team, by focusing on understanding and addressing the needs and development of team members to enable the highest possible team performance
Service Request Manager
The person responsible for ordering service requests to maximize value in a continuous flow or Kanban environment. Equivalent to product owner.
Siloed Organization
An organization structured in such a way that it only manages to contribute a subset of the aspects required for delivering value to customers. For contrast, see Value Stream.
Single Loop Learning
The practice of attempting to solve problems by just using specific predefined methods, without challenging the methods in light of experience
Smoke Testing
The practice of using a lightweight set of tests to ensure that the most important functions of the system under development work as intended
Specification by Example (SBE)
A collaborative approach to defining requirements and business-oriented functional tests for software products based on capturing and illustrating requirements using realistic examples instead of abstract statements
Spike.
A short time interval within a project, usually of fixed length, during which a team conducts research or prototypes an aspect of a solution to prove its viability
Sprint.
Describes a timeboxed iteration in Scrum
Sprint Backlog
A list of work items identified by the Scrum team to be completed during the Scrum sprint.
Sprint Planning
A collaborative event in Scrum in which the Scrum team plans the work for the current sprint.
In the sprint Planning Meeting, the Product Owner and the development team take the time to understand what will be worked on in the upcoming sprint, to estimate the level of effort of that work, and to define what “Done” means at the end of the sprint
Story Point
A unit-less measure used in relative user story estimation techniques
Swarming.
A technique in which multiple team members focus collectively on resolving a specific impediment
Technical Debt
The deferred cost of work not done at an earlier point in the product life cycle
Examples of technical debt are software code clean-up, maintenance, and standardization
Test-Driven Development
A technique where tests are defined before work is begun, so that work in progress is validated continuously, enabling work with a zero defect mindset
Timebox.
A fixed period of time, for example, 1 week, 1 fortnight, 3 weeks, or 1 month. See also Iteration.
T-shaped
Refers to a person with one deep area of specialization and broad ability in the rest of the skills required by the team. See also I-Shaped and Broken Comb
User Story
A brief description of deliverable value for a specific user. It is a promise for a conversation to clarify details
User Story Mapping
A visual practice for organizing work into a useful model to help understand the sets of high-value features to be created over time, identify omissions in the backlog, and effectively plan releases that deliver value to users
UX Design
The process of enhancing the user experience by focusing on improving the usability and accessibility to be found in the interaction between the user and the product
Value Stream
An organizational construct that focuses on the flow of value to customers through the delivery of specific products or services
Value Stream Mapping
A lean enterprise technique used to document, analyze, and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer. Used to eliminate wasteful work to reduce the time it takes to create value for the customer. The objective is to reduce the total cycle time.
Agile Manifesto
Individual andInteractionOver Process and Tools
Working Product Over ComprehensiveDocumentation
CustomerCollaborationOver Contract Negotiation
Responding toChangeOver Following the Plan
Characteristics of Iterative
Improve the product or result through successive prototypes or proofs of concepts which provides new stakeholder feedback.
Teams may use timeboxing on a given iteration.
Benefits projects when complexity is high, have frequent changes, or when the scope is subject to differing stakeholder views
Characteristics of Incremental
Optimize work for delivering value to sponsors or customers more often
than a single final product.
Teams plan initial deliverables before beginning their work.
The degree of change and variation is less important than ensuring
customers get value as soon as possible
Themes
are long-term strategic objectives with a broader scope.
* They provide context for decision-making and help navigate the product strategy within the organization.
* Agile themes sit on top of the work breakdown hierarchy and drive the creation of epics.
Epics
are collections of tasks or user stories.
* Epics break down development work into shippable components while
keeping the daily work connected to the larger theme.
* Epics are more specific than themes and can be measured so that PMs can
observe their contribution to the organization’s overall goal.
* User stories are the smallest piece of work in the agile framework
User stories
are the smallest piece of work in the agile framework.
* A user story is a brief explanation of a product feature written from the end
user’s perspective that articulates how the user will experience value.
* Some organizations may classify larger user stories (stories that can’t be
delivered within a single sprint) as epics.
* Alternatively, larger stories could be broken down into sub-tasks.
Index card has the 3 Cs: card, conversation, confirmation
Scrum – Release Planning
The release planning meeting is a meeting done with all stakeholders, development team, and Agile team in order to review and agree on what releases the project will contain and what user stories will be included in each release. This is typically a refinement of the product roadmap in preparation to release functionality to the user
* Team, Scum Master, ProductOwner get together to reviewVision and Backlog
* Break backlog down to the userstories
* No user story is larger than a sprit -must be broken-down
* Need to determine how long a Sprint will be
Scrum – Daily Scrum
10 to 15 minute for the team toreport to the team
* Focus on answering the key questions
* What did we get accomplished yesterday?
* What are we going to get done today?
* Do you have any blockers?
* Held same time every day - nevergets skipped
* Stand up to update Team Board -Visual artifact
* Scrum Master is the facilitator ofmeeting
Scrum – Retrospective
Key meeting results:
* Discussing what worked in the current sprint.
* Identifying challenge areas.
* Suggesting process improvements.
* Establishing best practices to be implemented in the next sprint
Sprint Review
Attendees include the Scrum Team and key stakeholders invited by the Product Owner;
* The Developers demonstrate the work that it has “Done” and answers questions about the Increment;
* The Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog as it stands. He or she projects likely target and delivery dates based on progress to date (if needed);
* The entire group collaborates on what to do next, so that the Sprint Review provides valuable input to subsequent Sprint Planning;
* The result of the Sprint Review is a revised Product Backlog that defines the probable Product Backlog items for the next Sprint.
Story Point
Story points are a unit of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work.
* When we estimate with story points, we assign a point value to each item.
* The raw values we assign are unimportant. What matters are the relative values.
* A story that is assigned a 2 should be twice as much as a story that is assigned a 1. It should also be two-thirds of a story that is estimated as 3 story points.
* Because story points represent the effort to develop a story, a team’s estimate must include everything that can affect the effort. That could include:
* The amount of work to do
* The complexity of the work
* Any risk or uncertainty in doing the work
Planning Poker
Planning poker is an agile estimation technique that makes use of story points to estimate the difficulty of the task at hand.
* It is based on the Fibonacci sequence; the story point values that can be assigned either following the Fibonacci or a modified Febonacci numbering sequence.
* Each of these represent a different level of complexity for the overall project.
Buckets Theory
Similar to planning poker, the bucket technique aims for consensus through discussion, and by assigning values to each task.
* This method relies on placing different values on a table. We call the placements ‘buckets’, but you can just use cards. The values are generally 0,1,2,3,4,5,8,13,20,30,50,100 and 200
* Discussion is key to make sure everyone agrees before the final estimates are set.
Dot Voting
This one is fairly simple: each person gets a number of dots and uses them to vote on which projects are big and small.
* More dots mean more time and effort is required. Fewer dots indicate a fairly straightforward and quick item
T-shirt Size Method
The items are estimated in standard tshirt sizes (i.e., XS, S, M, L, and XL).
* It can give a quick and rough estimate for how much work is expected for a
project. The sizes can be converted into numbers at a later stage – when the
team assigns a relative size to the project on hand.
* If estimators propose sizes that do not match up, then the team voices their opinions on the topic and must eventually reach a consensus.
* This is a pretty informal method that is great to use for a large number of items
7 different types of waste in Lean
Waiting
Motion
Defects
Task switching
Extra features
Extra processes
Partially done work
major dysfunctions that diminish team performance:
Absence of trust: Unwillingness to be open and transparent to the group
Fear of conflict: Team prefers to fake harmony over argument and debate
Lack of commitment: Team members have not bought into the team’s decisions
Avoidance of accountability: Team members do not call out inappropriate behavior or low standards from another teammate
Inattention to results: Personal needs take precedence over the team’s success
project pre-mortem
a process to envision the areas where a project could fail before the project has started.
project post-mortem
a process to identify the causes of a project failure after the project has been completed
Remember the future
is a vision-setting exercise to identify the definition of success from stakeholders. In a facilitated workshop, stakeholders imagine what success means for the project before the project gets started
Wideband Delphi
is an estimating method for estimating effort based on consensus that is anonymous. Help minimize:
bandwagin effect
HIPPO: Highest paid person’s opinion
groupthink
An Agile retrospective has the following five stages:
Set the stage
Gather data
Generate insights
Decide what to do
Close the retrospective
Activities that can help gather data during a retrospective include:
Brainstorming: The team meets to generate a long list of ideas.
Fishbone analysis: A visual diagramming tool to analyze the root cause of a problem.
Identify themes: The team identifies recurring patterns.
Five Whys: The team asks “why” five times to identify the root cause of the issue.
Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
is a technique for process analysis that aims to identify points of failure in a process. Then, it goes further to identify the root cause of the potential issue and the consequences should the issue occur. The first step is to map out the workflow of the process so that the identification of the failure modes can be done
Value stream mapping
is a technique to eliminate wasteful work to reduce the time it takes to create value for the customer. The objective is to reduce total cycle time by looking at process efficiency over an iteration using process cycle efficiency as a key metric
Process tailoring
refers to changing and adapting the implementation of Agile based on the project needs. After process analysis is done, process tailoring is the next step.
Process configuration mapping
is a technique that uses flowcharts to map out the workflow of a process for visualization.
Value-based analysis
is the process of assessing and prioritizing the business value of work items. For analyzing the business value of work items, we need to consider not only the business value we are gaining but also any development costs.
The feature brings positive value:
$200 * 4 = $800 for four weeks
$5,000 one-time savings
Total payback value: $5,800 over one month after its release
Development costs are $2,000
Total value for this feature: $5,800 - $2,000 = $3,800
There are three brainstorming methods used in Agile:
Quiet Writing: Stakeholders develop ideas by themselves before they are shared with the group.
Round-Robin: Stakeholders share their ideas by passing a token within the group, allowing ideas to build and grow on each other.
Free-for-All: Stakeholders shout out their ideas, allowing others to build their own further. However, quieter stakeholders may have an issue delivering their opinions openly.
Types of spikes
Architectural spike: used to evaluate the approach chosen and determine whether it is viable before executing any work
Risk based spike: used to investigate an issues or threat to the project
Types of iterations
Iteration 0: optional iteration where no deliverables are built. Used to prepare the team or project for starting work
Development iteration: a regular team produces a product increment as specified in the iteration goal
Iteration H / hardening iteration / release sprint: also called a release sprint. This iteration is dedicated to preparing for an upcoming release. Is used, for example, to stabilize the code, document the product, or for testing
Fixed-price work packages contract
break down the work into sizable work packages with a fixed price associated with them. The customer can then re-prioritize the work packages as requirements change and the supplier can readjust the cost of the work packages as more is known about the work. This helps both parties stay flexible throughout the Agile project.
Graduated fixed-price contracts
share the risk load between the parties, providing incentives for early completion of work. It is common for graduated fixed-price contracts to also punish the vendor if the work is late
Customized contracts
vary depending on how the supplier and customer piece together the contract using various parts of other types of contracts, such as DSDM, graduated fixed-price contracts, etc
eight characteristics of high-performing Agile teams:
Agile teams are self-organizing.
Agile teams are empowered to make their own decisions.
Agile teams own their decisions.
Agile teams have the mindset that they can solve any problem.
Agile teams have a team identity to be committed to success.
Agile team members trust one another.
Agile teams communicate and aim for group consensus.
Agile teams know that conflict is natural, but constructive feedback is needed.
process cycle efficiency
Process cycle efficiency is a metric used in value stream analysis that is calculated by dividing the amount of value-added time by the total cycle time.
hybrid methodology
is an approach to customize how the project will be implemented. There are two hybrid models:
Agile-Agile hybrid: Uses two Agile approaches in a single project. For example: Scrum and XP
Agile-Traditional hybrid: Uses an Agile approach in combination with traditional project management
INVEST
User stories should be written following the INVEST mnemonic so that they follow certain characteristics to be effective:
Independent: We aim to create user stories that minimize dependencies so that we can select them for work based on merit.
Negotiable: The team needs to be able to discuss the user stories with the Product Owner to make trade-offs for implementation.
Valuable: Business benefits need to be identified in the user story so that we always focus on building value.
Estimatable: We need to be able to estimate the work required to put in place the user story.
Small: User stories should aim to be small. Ideally, the user story should be able to get done within one iteration. We should watch out not to make the story extremely small where the cost overtakes the benefit of creating and tracking the story.
Testable: We need to be able to fully test the user stories so that we can assure the customer that the product will work as expected.
During the Scrum of Scrums, each Team Representative answers the following 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?
Process analysis
helps assess the effectiveness of the team’s Agile methods, which helps determine whether the process needs to be adjusted.
Systems thinking
is a technique used in Agile to evaluate the project at the system level.
The main ground rules for daily stand-ups are:
If you have a task, you must attend.
Only those who have tasks can talk.
Speak to the team, not the coach or Scrum Master.
No side conversations.
Create a new sticky note for each new task that is started.
Discuss issues after the meeting.
Solve problems off-line.
The term “Money for nothing” refers to
allowing early termination of the contract if what remains in the backlog is below a certain ROI cut-off for the organization. This approach provides the flexibility for the customer to get the most value from the project and not have to expend unnecessary resources if the return on investment does not warrant it.
The term “Change for free” refers to
taking out lower priority items and adding higher priority ones to the backlog at the end of the iteration. This approach often requires the client to be closely engaged in the work. Failure to do so makes the contract revert to time and materials. This approach helps make sure that value is continually reassessed and delivered with input from the customer. Providing free services to utilize contingency funds is not an Agile contracting approach.
relative prioritization scheme
is used in Agile to list all the features in order of priority. The priority is assigned based on the value the feature provides to the customer.
Relative prioritization schemes get rid of categorizations of the items in the list such as high, medium, and low. Such categorizations often lead to confusion about what is truly valuable, leading most of the items to be categorized as high
Escaped defects
are issues identified in the final product. This means that escaped defects avoided quality control and testing processes and ended up in the hands of the end user.
Types of variation in variance analysis
Common cause variation: Day-to-day differences that occur as part of doing typical work. should be accepted since they are inherent to the process.
Special cause variation: Unique differences that occur due to new factors. should be investigated further or take action to remove them from the process since they are atypical.
Trend analysis
used to observe not only what has already occurred but what the tendencies in the process/system are to indicate where things may end up in the future.
Control limits
involve statistically calculating the upper and lower limits of a process to determine the acceptable variation. Control limits help diagnose issues before they actually occur. As the measurements approach an upper or lower limit, actions can be taken to avoid surpassing the tolerance levels
control chart
helps identify when a process follows set specifications or needs to be adjusted due to non-random events to perform optimally.
When the chart shows seven consecutive points on the same side of the mean, this represents an assignable cause or a non-random event that needs to be investigated to reduce variance.
If a data point goes beyond the upper or lower control limits in a control chart, it is said that the process is out of control.
The control chart is charted around the mean or average line right at the center of the chart. The data points in the control chart may indicate random events or non-random events (also known as events with assignable causes).
Green Zone/Red Zone
is a collaboration model used to diagnose the level of support for working collaboratively in a group. A person in the green zone would be positive in their attitude and actions to effectively work together with others. It is common for anyone to occasionally be in the red zone. However, we should strive to be and steer others towards the green zone.
MoSCoW approach
MoSCoW prioritization scheme widely used in DSDM derives its name from: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Would like to have. This prioritization scheme helps put requirements into buckets to filter out what is absolutely not needed.
Little’s law
states that the duration of a queue is proportional to its size. Little’s law is used in the context of Kanban work in progress (WIP) queues
WIP = Throughput * Cycle Time
Cumulative flow diagrams (CFD)
visual representations of the status of work features. CFDs are stacked area graphs that show features in progress, remaining, and completed. CFDs provide an easy way to aggregate feature status over time.
Work in progress (WIP)
Is a term used in Kanban for the work that has started but has not been completed. Having too many WIP tasks in the workflow means that:
- Bottlenecks could be hidden in those tasks, slowing the overall workflow
- Risk can be associated with those tasks in WIP since the work is not yet done, leading to rework
- Until the task is complete, there is no value-add-on the activity, so there is unrealized return on investment
Agile requirements hierarchy
breaks down requirements in a hierarchy from broad to narrow. There are three ways to structure a requirements hierarchy:
- Epics are subdivided into user stories, which are subdivided into tasks.
- Epics are subdivided into features, then subdivided into user stories, and then subdivided into tasks.
- Features are subdivided into epics, then subdivided into user stories, and then subdivided into tasks.
Tasks are always the lowest level in the hierarchy.
conflict resolution types
Withdrawing: Retreating to avoid the conflict further
Collaboration: Working together to resolve the problem
Smoothing: De-emphasizing the differences between the parties to help the discussion move forward
Forcing: A person with authority forces the group to follow a decision
Compromising: Both parties give up something to reach an agreement
Affinity estimating
is a technique to group items into similar categories. Any newly created and estimated user stories are then compared to those in that category based on number of story points. It could be found that the estimation is correct or that the user story needs to be further resized.
IRR
IRR determines the interest rate of a cash flow stream at which the present value of the cash flow stream becomes zero.
VALUE-COMPLEXITY MATRIX
Business “value” depends on strategic objectives: a feature’s usefulness for customers, employees, or suppliers; its ability to generate revenue, traffic, or publicity; positive impact on product performance, security, and reliability.
Implementation “complexity” encompasses the time it takes to implement, the technical challenge, and development cost.
High-value, low-complexity: “Easy wins” that should be considered for your roadmap—but not at the expense of high-value, high-complexity features.
High-value, high-complexity: Larger strategic initiatives that require effort and time but pay enormous dividends. If possible, break these down into less complex tasks.
Low-value, low-complexity: Might or might not be worth your time. Revisit these features later and consider approaches to make them of higher value.
Low-value, high-complexity: Items that should be deprioritized.
VALUE-RISK MATRIX
Useful for addressing uncertainty about underlying assumptions: how long a feature might take to complete, how much it might cost, your team’s ability to execute, or how much executive support a project might receive.
High-value, low-risk: Items that should be prioritized.
High-value, high-risk: May have greater product impact than high-value, low-risk items, but you risk wasting time on features you don’t use. Understand your team’s risk tolerance and use careful judgment.
Low-value, low-risk: Might be worth your time eventually, but should be prioritized below high-value features.
Low-value, high-risk: Items that should be avoided
Triple Nickels” activity is designed to
generate ideas for actions or recommendations and uncover important topics about the project history.
Small batch size
Small batch systems aim to uncover inconsistencies and quality issues earlier in the project life cycle when the overall cost of change is lower
Color Code Dots
is used in conjunction with a timeline to gather data about feelings in a longer iteration, release, or project retrospective
Future Value
FV = PV * (1+r)^n.
iteration planning
The primary purpose of iteration planning is to refine suppositions made in the more coarse-grained release plan.
Schedule buffer
the time of duration added to a project individual activity or an entire project schedule that protects the due dates of scheduled tasks and a project from the impact of uncertainty and variation to the deliverable placed on a schedule
Feature buffer
Features in a project are usually of varying importance to the customer, by including items that are not ‘must’ or ‘should’ haves and then planning the project with the aim of delivering all of the functionality allows for flexibility. To do this, the customer will identify which features the project absolutely must deliver, and the continues to choose a further 25% to 40% of additional work that represents value but is not critical. The project is estimated using all of the stories, but should it become apparent that the project will overrun, those additional features can be removed from the schedule in order to bring the plan back on track
Which of the following is the correct way of assigning story points to user stories in a product backlog?
There are two common ways to assign story points. The first approach is to select a story that you expect to be one of the smallest stories you’ll work with and say that story is estimated at one story point. The second approach is instead to select a story that seems somewhat medium-sized and give it a number somewhere in the middle of the range you expect to use. Once you have fairly arbitrarily assigned a story point to the first story, each additional story is estimated by comparing it to the first story or to any others that have been estimated
Metaphor
In agile methods, especially eXtreme Programming, a metaphor of the project is developed to help guide a team toward a good architecture and a clearer way to discuss the structure of the software with the client.
S curve
used to visualize the progress of a project over time. They plot either cumulative work, based on person-hours, or costs over time. The name is derived from the fact that the data usually takes on an S-shape, with slower progress at the beginning and end of a project.
Monopoly Money
Give each player an amount of play money (Monopoly money is great). Be sure to give a variety of dollar amounts. Each player can spend their money where they want. For example, if you give each player $100, they can spend all $100 on one feature, or $5 on 20 features.
100 Point method
is another way to prioritize features. In this method, each stakeholder is given 100 points that he can use to vote for the most important requirements. How the stakeholders distribute the 100 points is up to them
Dot voting
As the Scrum Master, you give every member of the team a set number of votes (typically three), called dots. Solutions are written on individual note cards and placed on a table. The individual team members will take their votes, in the form of a dot, and place it on a note card they favor
Multi Voting
Is a technique that allows a team to vote on a long list of ideas into a manageable number of best options or top priorities. In other words, Multivoting is a way for a group to narrow a list of choices down to a manageable few. While multivoting is NOT a decision-making tool, it is a great way to achieve consensus on an option that the group most favors. Generally, it follows the brainstorming technique.
Kano Analysis
is an analysis tool to explore and measure customer needs. It’s a way to identify the basic needs of customers, as well as performance and excitement requirements. This model is based on the view that functionality is not the only measure of how ‘good’ a product. Customer emotions should also be taken into account.
Kano model / analysis categories
Basic
Features falling into this group are those that customers expect across all products of its type. They’re essential for the product’s basic function, and while they’re not particularly likely to delight users, satisfaction levels could drop significantly if said features were missing from a product’s design.
Performance/Satisfiers
These features demonstrate a product team’s commitment to greater functionality versus the basic suite. They add to the overall experience and can help one product gain a slight competitive edge over another, though it’s unlikely to be a deal-breaker.
Excitement/delighters
Features in this category can make a significant difference to a customer’s purchase decision and a user’s satisfaction. Excitement attributes/delighters have the power to give a product a greater edge and stand out from rival releases.
They can encourage a user to become, and stay, loyal to a brand over a number of years, even as subsequent products’ quality may decrease. ‘Delighters’ can turn users into brand advocates and encourage them to share positive feedback online, driving new customers to try the product.
Indifferent attributes
Any feature considered ‘indifferent’ makes neither an explicitly positive or negative impact on users. They may struggle to decide whether the feature’s presence increases or decreases their satisfaction levels.
Reverse attributes
Features within this category actively dissatisfy users and should be left out of the product altogether. They can cause users to become frustrated by a product and even consider alternatives if there are enough of them present.
Wireframes
is a schematic or blueprint that is useful for helping you, your programmers and designers think and communicate about the structure of the software or website you’re building
quick mock-ups of parts of a product made to elicit feedback from users
Velocity
a metric that calculates how long user stories within a particular sprint have taken to complete against their estimate. This allows project managers to accurately predict how long future sprints, or an overall project, will take to complete
Value-based decomposition
is a continuation of the process of value based analysis. Elicits requirements and breaks these down / ranks those requirements into the development process
Ideal time
is an estimate of the number of days your team would take to complete a project if they worked on nothing else and had no interruptions. In this context, “interruptions” means anything that causes the team to stop work on the project, including team meetings, training, other projects, illness, etc
Fibonacci Sequence
is one popular scoring scale for estimating agile story points. In this sequence, each number is the sum of the previous two in the series. The Fibonacci sequence goes as follows: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89… and so on
Cycle time vs lead time
The Lead Time measures the time from the moment the customer makes a request to the time they receive something/ time i takes for something to go through the entire process.
The Cycle Time measures the time it takes the development team to work on the request and deliver it
= WIP / throughput
Throughout vs productivity
Throughput is the avg amount of work the team can get done in a time period at which the work is done
Productivity is the rate of efficiency at which the work is done
Scientific Method
Hypothesis-driven development allows constant analysis of new information to implement new insights (and deliver new customer value) on an ongoing basis
EMV Formula for Risk
= Risk impact (in dollars) x risk probability (%)
Five whys
to discover the casue and effect relationships involved in a particular problme and get to the root causes of the problem
Fishbone analysis
is a visual tool that oftern accompanies the five why exercise since it provides a way to display the causing or affecting root cause of the analysis. Is done by drawing an emplty fihbone diagram and writing the problem at the head of the fish. Next step is to identofy the categories of the contributing factors
Short subjects
helps the team agree on which problem-resolution actions to pursue. The team uses an action wheel with categories such as “Keep, Drop, Add” to identify problem and resolution actions.
SMART goals
helps the team creat goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relavant, and Timely
Plus/Delta
capture and vailidate our ideas for what we should do more of and what we should change that is on a T-diagram on a whiteboard or flip chart
Shores Scoring Model
offers a self assessment quize and scoring graph focused on XP practices. Measures the following: thinking, collaborating, releasing, planning, developing
Tabakas team self assessment model
A model of assessing the attributes of high performing teams; Self organization, empowered to make decisions, belief in vision/success, committed team, trust each other, participatory decision making, concensus driven, constructive disagreement
Response time
is the time that an item waits until work starts.
The seven key disciplines of AgileUP are:
model, implementation, test, deployment, configuration management, project management, and environment
Which of the following is generally known as the best Agile estimating technique?
Planning poker
On a burndown chart, the intersection of the work remaining trend line and the horizontal axis indicates the:
the most likely completion date.
Agile planning definitions
A task is a short narrative that includes technical level work detailed enough to be actionable by the product team.
User stories are short narratives reflecting a small size of business functionality to be implemented in a product. A user story can be further decomposed into tasks.
An epic is a large size of business functionality that may span multiple iterations to complete.
A feature includes a specific business functionality that needs to be further decomposed to go through iteration planning.
Fist of five
voting method in participatory decision models asks group members to show their degree of agreement by showing the number of fingers that indicates their support. One finger up indicates total support of the decision and all five fingers up to shows complete opposition.
Temperature Reading
allows people to include aspects of group life that are usually ignored: appreciations, puzzles, and hopes and wishes.
Cost variance (CV)
measures the cost performance of the project by subtracting the actual cost from the earned value. A negative cost variance indicates that the project is over budget.
requirements prioritization model
takes into account four factors for each new requirement: benefit, penalty, cost, and risk.
SPI in agile
need to look at the features achieved versus the plan. Thus, we would divide completed features by planned features
ROTI stands for Return on Time Invested
This technique is used in the closing retrospective phase for iteration or release retrospectives. It helps generate feedback on the retrospective process and gauge the effectiveness of the session from the team members’ perspectives.
Delta activity
is used during team retrospective meetings to identify team strengths and improvement opportunities
Patterns and Shifts
The team looks for links and connections between facts and feelings and guides the group in recognizing and naming patterns that contribute to current issues
Locate Strengths
is to provide a balance when an iteration, release, or project hasn’t gone well
If a project costing $125,000 produces a $139,000 return at the end of a year, what is the interest rate?
Present Value (PV) = Future Value (FV) / (1 + interest rate) ^ periods. $125,000 = $139,000 / (1 + i)^1. Solving for i, we get the interest rate of 11.2%.
Theory X
stresses the importance of strict supervision, external rewards, and penalties which negatively influence a team’s performance
Servant-leadership model
based on the idea that leaders prioritize serving the greater good. Leaders with this style serve their team and organization first. They don’t prioritize their own objectives. Employees in a servant leadership environment are more likely to feel that their voices are heard
Padding
has the pejorative meaning of excess time arbitrarily added to an estimate. We pad an estimate when we think it will take three days to complete a task but declare a five day estimate, just in case
How is the activity ROTI conducted?
At the end of retrospective, ask team members to give feedback on whether they spent their time well.
What is the recommend approach to be taken for the themes that fell under the “High Risk” and “High Value” quadrant?
Do first
Introspective
is an ad-hoc meeting to resolve specific issues or bottlenecks that arise in the project. Teams use various process analysis techniques to resolve such issues during the session.
The model of situational leadership developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey categorizes four leadership styles:
directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. This model can be mapped to Tuckman’s model for team formation and development.
Style 1: Directing - High Task, Low Relationship interactions - Provide clear directions and rigid accountability in order to get the person to expeditiously complete the project activity.
Style 2: Coaching - High Task, High Relationship interactions - Provide encouraging direction to both train the individual and maintain their high level of motivation, don’t under-lead.
Style 3: Supporting - Low Task, Low Relationship interactions - Since this person is capable, you must focus on motivation. Relationship interactions will help to identify the underlying causes for lack of motivation and suggest ways to overcome them.
Style 4: Delegating - low Task, Low Relationship interactions - These individuals are budding superstars, so let them shine, don’t over-lead
features chart
is a combination of burnup and burndown charts. Effectively, it shows the number of features remaining and the number of features completed. It could also include the total number of features over time
Herzberg’s theory of motivation has two types of agents that affect team motivation:
Hygiene agents: These factors need to exist as a foundation to have at least a low level of performance. Examples include job security, paycheck, good working conditions, and relationships.
Motivating agents: These factors help enhance performance. Examples include opportunities, responsibility, appreciation, and recognition.
There are three Scrum artifacts:
product backlog, sprint backlog, and product increment. At the end of each sprint, the development team builds an increment of the solution based on the sprint backlog.
Clark and Wheelwright theory on multi-tasking
studied the effect of multi-tasking and found that the time an individual spends on value-adding work drops rapidly when the individual is working on more than two tasks. With two value-adding tasks, if a team member becomes blocked on one task, he/she can switch to the other task. It is recommended that you assign tasks in a way that each team member has “two independent tasks” to perform at any given point in time.
Conflict resolution expert Speed B. Leas developed a
framework to determine the seriousness of a conflict to help deescalate the situation. Further, we can use this framework to focus on the language the team uses. This will give us an indication of the severity of the conflict and where we are in the stages to resolve it. There are five levels in this framework:
Level 1: Problem to solve: Information sharing
Level 2: Disagreement: Guarded team members over resolving issues
Level 3: Contest: Winning the conflict over resolving it
Level 4: Crusade: Protecting the group is the focus
Level 5: World War: No room for discussion with the other party
The MoSCoW prioritization scheme widely used in DSDM derives its name from:
Must have: Needs to be included for the project to succeed
Should have: Needs to be included for the product to work
Could have: Adds additional value to the product
Would like to have: Nice to have, but not necessary for the project to succeed
The XP roles are
coach, customer, programmers, and testers.
Circle of questions
Each team member asks a question about how to improve an issue identified and the next person addresses it.
Retrospective planning game
The team plans the work to reach process improvement goals identified in the next iteration.
Empirical processes
are those that rely on observation and trial-and-error. These processes do not follow a standard recipe but rely on inspection and adaptation
Active listening, according to the authors of Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives, progresses through three levels:
Internal listening: We hear the words spoken and interpret them from our personal lens only.
Focused listening: We put ourselves in the mind of the speaker.
Global listening: We pick up on more subtle indicators to read the situation comprehensively and not just through the meaning of the words and within our own experience.
Fast failure
is a condition where a project is not viable any longer, potentially due to an issue that was not resolved. The saved resources should be redirected to another project.
Emergent leadership
in the Agile context means that leaders organically surface from the project team at various times. These leaders emerge without a power struggle, since everyone recognizes their aptitudes depending on the context.
Some examples of collaboration games are:
Remember the Future: A vision setting exercise to identify the definition of success from stakeholders
Sailboat or Speedboat: Helps identify threats and opportunities for the project
Buy a Feature: A prioritization exercise
Prune the Product Tree: Helps stakeholders gather and refine requirements
What’s the ideal team size, per Agile practices?
Per Agile practices, ideally Agile project teams should be 12 people or fewer.
Regression testing
is performed throughout the project. Regression testing ensures that new functionality does not break what has already been built by performing testing after the new code has been compiled.
Another way to describe test-driven development (TDD) is which of the following?
Red-Green-Clean
Leading and lagging metrics
Leading metrics provide insights or predictions about the future for leaders to make an informed decision. Lagging metrics use historical performance to analyze the trends and make a recommendation of what is most likely to occur.
W5H attributes
(what, where, who, when, why, and how)
There are two participatory decision-making models:
Convergence: The group discusses all options openly, seeking to converge on the best answer together.
Shared collaboration: Various techniques are used to avoid bias towards opinions in the group. The goal is to reach a decision by making the process fair.
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, lists the following as major dysfunctions that diminish team performance:
Absence of trust: Unwillingness to be open and transparent to the group
Fear of conflict: The team prefers to fake harmony over argument and debate
Lack of commitment: Team members are not bought into the team’s decisions
Avoidance of accountability: Team members do not call out inappropriate behavior or low standards from another teammate
Inattention to results: Personal needs take precedence over the team’s success
Alistair Cockburn’s Shu-Ha-Ri model of skill mastery describes a three-step process for reaching skill mastery:
Shu – Obeying the rules
Ha – Consciously moving away from the rules
Ri – Unconsciously finding an individual path
Empowered teams are characterized by being:
Self-organizing: The team is free to decide how to accomplish its work and adjust its inner workings as it sees fit.
Self-directing: The team is free from command-and-control management and is enabled to determine how to best implement its work.
There are five stages of team formation and development:
Forming: initially coming together as a team
Storming: engaging in turmoil and challenging each other
Norming: learning to work with one another
Performing: working effectively together
Adjourning: disbanding of the team
The Dreyfus model of adult skill acquisition describes five stages to show how adults progress through their learning to acquire a new skill:
Novice: Follows existing rules.
Advanced beginner: Still follows existing rules but begins to understand the context of the rules. A guideline is used rather than a rule.
Competent: Begins to decide which rules are optimal for each situation.
Proficient: Begins to build a strategy rather than focusing on the rules. Becomes more emotionally involved in the task.
Expert: Intuitive approach where on-the-spot alternatives can be selected.
The Dreyfus model of adult skill acquisition describes five stages to show how adults progress through their learning to acquire a new skill:
Novice: Follows existing rules.
Advanced beginner: Still follows existing rules but begins to understand the context of the rules. A guideline is used rather than a rule.
Competent: Begins to decide which rules are optimal for each situation.
Proficient: Begins to build a strategy rather than focusing on the rules. Becomes more emotionally involved in the task.
Expert: Intuitive approach where on-the-spot alternatives can be selected.
proxy customer
is an individual selected to represent a group of stakeholders. The group could be a functional or business department in the organization. This person will speak on their behalf and represent them directly in the decisions made for product work in the Agile team.
Coaching project team members involves four major aspects:
Half a step ahead: A coach does not tell others what to do but talks them through their problems and meets them half a step ahead to lead them to a solution.
Guarantee safety: Trust is inherent in a coaching relationship by providing a safe environment for the individual to open up, assuring them confidentiality.
Partnership: The individual grows insights and expertise in their field by partnering with others.
Respect: A coach treats everyone with respect and keeps coaching conversations private.
The “Gulf of Evaluation” refers to:
a semantic gap between what the customer expects and what the team delivers. This is an inherent problem in knowledge projects where we are dealing with intangible goods. This gap in the product often leads to rework.
What are two planning activities that are performed in XP?
Iteration and release planning
Using the conflict resolution framework developed by Speed B. Leas, the project manager determined they were dealing with a Level 2 conflict. What should the Scrum Master do then, using this framework?
Using the conflict resolution framework developed by Speed B. Leas, conflict identified at Levels 1 through 3 should be left to the team to fix directly.
communication model
shows how a message travels from the sender to the receiver. Other components of the communication model are encoder, decoder, medium, and noise.
A project tweet is
an exercise that asks stakeholders to describe the project goals and vision in 140 characters or fewer. This helps to see the gaps in stakeholder understanding of the project and to align objectives
Triple nickels:
The team is divided into groups of five and spends five minutes building on five ideas, five times
What are the two factors used to measure the effectiveness of different communication channels?
interactivity and bandwidth (also called information density). These two factors combined measure the power to transfer complex information effectively.
There are two types of releases:
Date driven releases: Targeted release due to an upcoming deadline
Functionality releases: Targeted release that aims to deliver a specific functionality to the customer
The Thumbs Up/Down/Sideways participatory decision model
asks each of the members of the group to hold their thumbs up, down, or sideways to signal approval, rejection, or inability to make up their minds. This model leaves room for the neutral or ambivalent voters to voice their concerns or questions, helping the team reach a consensus.`
The two axes used to map out the performance of deliverables in the Kano analysis are:
The Kano analysis is a technique to classify customer preferences into the following categories: Exciters or delighters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers, and indifferent. The two axes of the Kano analysis are customer satisfaction and degree of achievement
Some examples of collaboration games are:
Remember the future: A vision setting exercise to identify the definition of success from stakeholders
Speedboat: Helps identify threats and opportunities for the project
Bang-for-the-buck: Helps examine value and cost
Defect cycle time
is the time it takes from when the defect is first found to when it is fixed. The length of the defect cycle time gives an indication of how far up the cost of change graph the defect will go.
Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis:
Team members look back on the retrospective to identify what helped, what hindered progress, and to develop ideas or hypotheses for improving future retrospectives.
Personas
are profile-type documents that outline key stakeholder values and interests. This helps the development team focus on and empathize with the end-user
The Highsmith Decision Spectrum
is a participatory decision model where voters indicate how they feel about an idea by placing a check mark next to a value in a range of options ranging from “In favor” on one extreme, to “Veto” on the other. This approach gives the opportunity for people to explain their selection to the group.
What are the four stages of the Framework for Integrated Testing (FIT), or FitNesse, in relation to acceptance testing?
Discuss, distill, develop, demo
Risk severity is calculated by multiplying which of the following?
Risk probability and risk impact
The cone of uncertainty can be used to
calculate the ranges of the estimates. If the team has completed the first iteration, the multipliers are 0.6 and 1.6. If the team has completed two iterations, the multipliers are 0.8 and 1.25. If the team has completed three iterations, the multipliers are 0.85 and 1.15.
The cone of uncertainty can be used to calculate the ranges of the estimates. If the team has completed the first iteration, the multipliers are 0.6 and 1.6. If the team has completed two iterations, the multipliers are 0.8 and 1.25. If the team has completed three iterations, the multipliers are 0.85 and 1.15.
When you divide the team into small groups and keep the people who worked closely with each other together, you are creating
affinity groups
Which of the following are the general steps involved during a release plan?
The correct sequence is: Conditions of satisfaction -> estimating user stories -> prioritizing user stories -> selecting release date
Which of the following regarding AgileUP and Unified Process (UP) is correct?
AgileUP features more accelerated cycles and less heavyweight processes than Unified Process
