Agile PMP Terms Flashcards
100-Value Method
- stakeholders are allotted 100 points to spend on features
- points are assigned to the most important requirements
- can be private or public voting
Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)
- sometimes called FIT: framework for integrated testing
- testing is focused on business requirements and is all about desired behavior
- entire team gets together and discusses the acceptance criteria for a work product
- team creates the tests which allows the team to write just enough code and automated tests to meet the criteria
- distill the test in a framework friendly format
- develop code until it passes
- demo
Acceptance Testing
- test to determine acceptability of the results for a specific requirement, specification, or contract requirement
Adaptive Leadership
- directive: during forming stage of team development
- high directive behavior
- low supportive behavior
- coaching: during storming stage of team development
- high directive behavior
- high supportive behavior
- supporting: during norming stage of team development
- low directive behavior
- high supportive behavior
- delegating: during performing stage of team development
- low directive behavior
- low supportive behavior
Adaptive Life Cycle (Agile)
fixed schedule and fixed costs; scope is broadly defined with the understanding it will be refined throughout the project * Scrum and Agile are the most common * customer’s requirements are documented and prioritized in backlog which can be adjusted * utilizes kanban board * work is planned in short increments to allow customer to change and reprioritize * example: a software project would have each phase include high-level feasibility, design, and planning followed by short, iterative phases of detailed design, coding, testing, releasing
Affinity Estimating
- product owner, scrum master, and team participate
- group items/user stories into like groups
- features go under those functions
- also can group by story points or size of stories
- allows for triangulation in terms of knowing how much time there is in the sprint and the size of the stories for estimating purpose
- also allows to check that the story points awarded to each story are roughly equal
- sticky note system
- team finally estimates how many points can be done in an iteration
Agile Charter
- authorizes the project and project manager
- acknowledges that change is likely
- includes
- vision statement
- team constitution
- code of conduct
- communication rules
- definition of done and key success factors
- defines
- who will be engaged
- what the project is about
- where the project will take place
- when the project will start and end
- one of the constraints is schedule
- why the project is being chartered
- how the project goals will be achieved
Agile Communication Planning
- communication management plan
- transparency is paramount
- face-to-face is always the best method
- what stakeholders expect in terms of communication
- performance reporting
- how often
- face-to-face communication with stakeholders is preferred in Agile
- what technologies will be used
- what methods will be used
- what regular meetings can be scheduled in advance
Agile Contracts
- contracts can be a form of constraint in projects because they are not typically not flexible
- contracts usually constrain time, cost, and scope but in Agile scope is variable
- always keep in mind customer collaboration in contracting because they are more involved in Agile projects than predictive
Agile Life Cycle
requirements are dynamic, activities repeated until correct, frequent small deliveries, and the goal is customer value via feedback
Agile Manfesto
* individuals and interactions over processes and tools * working software over comprehensive documentation * customer collaboration over contract negotiation * responding to change over following a plan
Agile Project Sponsor
- authorizes the project
- signs the project charter
- has authority to authorize use of resources
- main advocate for the project and share the project vision
- give direction to product owner
- determine value on time and budget constraints
Agile RFP
- request for proposal that needs to specify Agile methodology that will be used
- buyer might need to educate the vendor about Agile practices
- contracts can be difficult because contracts do not welcome change but Agile does
Agile Stakeholder Engagement
- engage and empower business stakeholders
- establish shared vision and understanding of success
- share information frequently and provide transparency
- form working agreements for participation
- assess organizational changes to maintain a stakeholder engagement
- use collaborative decision-making and conflict resolution skills
- balance certainty and adaptability
Agile Teams
comprised of cross-functional team members, product owner, and team facilitator (servant leader); ideally three to nine members in a team and collocated; members are 100% dedicated to the team; teams are self-managed; composed of generalists and specialists; have a stable work environment
Architectural Spike
- a timeboxed effort to test the approach
- usually early in the project within an iteration
- test the environment and the development set-up
- prevents having future iterations built on unstable architecture
Attractive Quality
- Kano category of customer preference
- nice to have but not required features
Backlog Refinement Meeting
- product owner works with team to prepare some stories for the upcoming iterations
- team learns about potential challenges or problems in the stories
- product owner can request a spike if unsure about dependencies and risks
- team should not spend more than one hour per week doing backlog refinement
Burndown Chart
- shows where the project is going over time
- story points are on the y axis while time is on the x axis;
- one line represents the plan while another represents the story points remaining
- could encourage team to rush to meet the acceptance criteria
- shows the effect of team members multitasking, working on stories that are too large, or having team members out of the office
- type of capacity measure
Burnup Chart
- show the work that has been completed
- story points are on the y axis and time is on the x axis
- one line represents the plan while another represents the story points done
- allows team to see what they have accomplished which helps them proceed to the next piece of work
- type of capacity measure
Candidate Story
potential user story that comes from the perspective of a user or customer
CARVER
acronym to measure the goals and mission of the project with each letter meaning: Criticality, Accessibility, Return, Vulnerability, Effect, and Recognizability
Caves
- work spaces for alone time and thinking in an Agile work environment
Ceremony
meeting conducted during an Agile project that consists of daily stand-up, iteration planning, iteration review, and iteration retrospective.
Change-Driven Life Cycle
uses iterative, incremental, or adaptive development life cycles and have varying levels of early planning for scope, schedule, and cost; projects can use a combination of incremental and iterative * incremental * iterative * agile
Coaching
- talk through the problem instead of telling them what to do
- guarantee safety
- partner with managers
- create positive regard
Coarse Grained Requirements
- keep the overall design balanced
- delays decisions on implementation details until the last responsible moment
- not spending a lot of time polishing backlog until it’s time
- no value in polishing user stories or requirements that might change or be eliminated from the backlog
Collaborative Communication Model
- two-way communication model that is interactive
- collaborative communication happens in daily stand-up
Collective Code Ownership
- core practice of XP
- any pair of developers can improve or amend the code
- improve defect resolution
- discover mistakes before it gets to customer
- requires courage because mistakes are viewable by everyone
Commons
- open areas for collaboration in an Agile work environment
- all team members should be able to see each other be no more than 33 ft apart
Community Values
- five values shared by team and stakeholders
- respect for one another
- transparent communication
- freedom to be creative
- respect for time
- respect for end user
- respect for the code and the process
- respect for the rules and the team charter
- respect for one another
Cone of Uncertainty
- estimating uncertain work makes it much more difficult to provide an accurate or narrow estimate
- beginning of the project is very uncertain
- as more iterations and thus planning happens, the cone of uncertainty narrows and iteration/sprint backlog grooming becomes more accurate
Continuous Integration
- core practice in XP that ensures new code integrates with existing code to avoid major problems in the future
- early warning about incompatible code and easier to fix smaller chunks of code
- easier to reverse code to last known good state
- disadvantage is the set-up time is lengthy, requires a dedicated server, and builing a suite of automated tests takes time
- incorporation of new and changed code into the repository
- source code control system: version control
- build tools: compile the code
- test tools: unit test to ensure functionality
- scheduler or trigger: builds are launched on schedule or conditions
- notifications: email or IM reporting on results of the build
Convergent Collaboration
- participating decision making models like collective agreements and conversations about what the team is doing
Cross-Functional Team Members
- generalizing specialists – knowledgeable in more than one area
- self-organizing
- assign work based on their own strengths and weaknesses
- work on one project at a time
- trying to make product
- in the shortest amount of time
- of the highest quality
- without external dependencies
- responsbile for
- sharing in daily stand-up
- sprint review
- participating in sprint retrospective
- writing tests
Crystal Clear Method
crystal method for team of 1-4 people
Crystal Methods
family of methods designed to scale and provide a methodology rigor based on the number of people involved in the project; emphasizes frequent delivery, reflective improvement, close or osmotic communication, personal safety, easy access to expert users, and automated testing
Crystal Orange Method
crystal method for team of 20-40 people
Crystal Red Method
crystal method for team of 5-100 people but with large budget and life
Crystal Yellow Method
crystal method for team of 6-20 people
Cumulative Flow Diagram
stacked area graphs that show features that are remaining, in progress, and completed
Cumulative Flow Diagram
chart that displays feature backlog, work-in-progress, and completed features
Customer Negotiation
five strategies for negotiating problems with customers
- accept (do nothing)
- avoid (create a work-around)
- ameliorate (reduce the impact)
- cover (make it invisible to the user)
- resolve (eliminate it)
Customer Tests
- core component of XP
Customers
- determine what success looks like in the project
- sometimes bring politics into the project
- team needs to use influencing, negotiation, and compromising to ensure business value items are top priority
Cycle Time
- time required to process an item
- measured from the moment the task is started to the moment it is completed
- used to measure bottlenecks and delays
- formula for cycle time is WIP / throughput
- if a team’s throughput (velocity) in a ten day iteration is 27 points, and the WIP is 18 points
- 18 / 27 = .66 of an iteration for cycle time
- .66 of a ten day iteration is 6.6 days
- if a team’s throughput (velocity) in a ten day iteration is 27 points, and the WIP is 18 points
Daily Standup Meeting
- only the development team and scrum master participate
- product owner can attend but cannot comment
- team micro-commits to each other and uncovers problems on a daily basis
- no longer than 15 minutes and at the same time and same place everday
- no side conversations
- solve problems offline
- answers
- what was completed since the last standup
- what is planned between now and the next standup
- what are the impediments
DEEP
- qualities of a product backlog which include
- detailed
- estimate-able
- emergent
- prioritized
Defect Cycle Time
- amount of time between you discover a defect and when it is resolved
- longer it takes to resolve, the more expensive the defect is
Definable Work
- characterized by clear procedures that have proved successful on similar projects in the past; ex: cars, electrical appliances, and homes
Defined Processes
- process works the same way the exact same time
- given the same inputs, a defined process should produce the same output every time
Dispatching Communication Model
- two-way communication that is top-down
- communication between manager and employee
DMAIC
- phases within the methodology for Six Sigma
- define: project is defined, business value is identified, project charter is developed
- measure: data is collected, measurements are defined, defects are defined, benchmarks are defined
- analyze: find root cause of defects, 5 Whys, fishbone diagram
- improve: eradicate defects and improve process
- control: validate benefits of the improvements, transfer project to owner, close out project
Dot-Voting (Multi-Voting)
- stakeholders get a predetermined number or dots to vote on the features they think are most important
- can color code them for prioritizing and weighting stakeholders
- risks
- new features can’t be considered once voting begins
- similar options are penalized
- people might follow the crowd
Dreyfus Model of Adult Skill Acquisition
- novice: follow the rules and make analytical decision
- advanced beginner: follow rules but based on experience can better understand the rules
- competent: determine which rules are best for each situation
- proficient: actively choose the best strategy rather than simply relying on the rules
- expert: decision-making becomes intuitive
Dynamic Systems Development Method
- emphasis on constraint-driven delivery
- framework sets cost, quality, and time from the outset and then uses formal prioritization of scope to meet those constraints; focuses on the business need
- on-time delivery, collaboration, uncompromised quality, incremental builds with strong foundations
- iterative development
- continuous and clear communication
- demonstrated control by using appropriate techniques
Eight Characteristics of High-Performance Teams
- self-organizing
- empowered
- believe they can solve any problem
- committed to team success
- own decisions and commitments
- motivated by trust
- consensus driven
- participate in constructive disagreement
Empirical Processes
- no defined work that’s created
- based on the project and what is happening
- more creative than defined processes
- reactive
- self-organizing Agile teams need
- clarity: understand they have permission to be creative and do the work
- ability: training if they need more technical knowledge
- authority (agency): team can make decisions
- safety: team won’t have repercussions for trying new things and will be protected
- belief (confidence): confidence in abilities, system, process, and product
- interest: excited about the project
Engagement Culture
- reward people for solving problems and sharing the knowledge they gained from the process
DSDM Contracting
- creates a fixed schedule, cost, and quality approach but follows Agile framework
- takes best parts of RAD and waterfall and adapts them to Agile projects
Epic
- large user story that spans more than one iteration in Agile
- five or more related user stories are an epic
Escaped Defects
- defects reported by the customer that have escaped all software quality processes
- most expensive to fix
Exploratory Testing
- aims to discover issues and problems with behavior
- attempt to break the software
- NOT automated; tester is in charge
- in addition to scripted testing
eXtreme Programming (XP)
- goal: simplest thing that could work
- software development method based on frequent cycles team
- consists of coach, programmers, testers, and customer
- the team sits together in an informative workspace
- there’s real customer involvement
- team works at a sustainable pace
- utilizes pair programming and test-first programming
- collective ownership of code
- incremental design
- ten-minute build
- continuous integration
Feature-Driven Development Method (Domain Object Modeling)
- developed to meet the needs of a large software development project
- order of work is to develop an overall model, build a feature list, plan by feature, design by feature, and finally build by feature
- each class of code is assigned to a single owner
- emphasis on configuration management
- domain object modeling: a technique used to understand the project problem description and to translate the requirements of that project into software components of a solution
- regular builds of product
- share visibility of progress
Features Chart
- burnup or burndown chart that shows how requirements grew over the project
Fist of Five
decision making technique in which voting is signaled by fist; closed fist is no support and five fingers up is full support; fewer than free fingers, the team member discusses the objections
Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- absence of trust
- fear of conflict
- lack of commitment
- avoidance of accountability
- inattention to results
Five Whys
- root causes analysis technique that asks WHY five times
- problem is looked into deeper each time WHY is asked. Toyota developed this technique
Fixed-Price Work Packages
- individual work packages are estimated for cost and the price of the work remains constant
- vendor only gets that amount of money to complete that work package
- vendor assumes the cost of overruns
- new changes to scope are estimated as they come
Graduated Fixed Price Project
- if a vendor delivers on time, they are paid the hourly rate
- if a vendor delivers early, they get a bump in the hourly rate
- if a vendor delivers late, they get a reduced hourly rate
- prevents sandbagging
- buyer and seller get to share in success
Green Zone
- environment that encourages individuals to
- take responsibility
- respond non-defensively
- welcome feedback
- build mutual success
- use persuasion to implement their ideas
- be firm but not rigid
- think about both short-term and long-term goals
- approach conflict neutrally
- speak calmly and directly
Grooming the Backlog
- backlog refinement/prioritization of backlog items (user stories) by the product owner representative of the stakeholder
- entire project team might participate but the product owner is officially in charge of the backlog
- consider the risks introduced each time
Gulf of Evaluation
- difference between is said and what is understood
- particularly an issue with intangible projects such as website development
- a firm DOD helps prevent this
- frequent checkpoints and reviews provide opportunities to build consensus between project team and project stakeholders
Hallway Testing
quick usability test of the interface being developed; purpose is to make sure that users perceive it as intended by the developers, and to identify any obstacles that arise during its use; test subjects are people not involved with project
High-Bandwidth Communication
face-to-face communication that also includes non-verbal communication
Highsmith Decision Spectrum
- spectrum from in favor of an idea to mixed feelings to not in favor but will commit to veto
Ideal Time
- in estimating, the time it would take to complete a user story if there were no interruptions
Increment
- fully-developed, working, potentially shippable product
- each increment is ready to be released once there’s enough aggregated value
Indifferent Quality
- Kano category of customer preference
- customers are indifferent to quality feature