Cards Flashcards
Accountability
“Buck stops here” position for any task or activity – who is ultimately going to be held accountable for something
ACT
Acronym for Agile Champions Team – a team that evangelizes Agile across the organization
ADAPT
Acronym for Awareness, Desire, Ability, Promotion, Transfer: A model that describes necessary conditions for success of Agile adoption
All-In pattern
A pattern for agile adoption wherein the entire organization goes in for agile adoption all at the same time (as opposed to Small pilot – see below)
Analysts
Usually meant to refer to business analysts who translate business requirements into system requirements
Anti-pattern
A symptom of a deeper dysfunction that indicates improper or incorrect implementation
Architect
Usually meant to refer to Technical architects, who establish the design patterns and provide the technology roadmap to the team
Assessments
Questionnaires or evaluation methods to ascertain the level of maturity in a certain discipline – e.g. Agile assessment
ATDD
Acceptance Test Driven Development – a pattern of working that emphasizes writing the acceptance tests before even writing the code
Backlog
A collection of “work items” that the team can work on, resulting in additional value to the team
Balanced scorecards
A system of measuring the health of a system from various points of view to get a holistic view
Big room
A pattern for running sprint planning meetings for multiple scrum teams working on the same project
Card (or story card)
Representing an index card (usually 3X5 inches or 4X6 inches) on which a story is written
CDE
Acronym for Containers, Differences and Exchanges – constraints within which a self-organized team operates
C-FORC
Acronym for Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, Courage – the values of Scrum
Chief Product Owner
A title often given to the manager of all the product owners working on a single (large or enterprise scale) product
Coach
Analogous to a sports trainer or coach – usually indicating a team’s mentor either on a technology or a process
Collective ownership
The notion that the whole team is collectively responsible and accountable for the success or failure
Commitment
The team “signing up” to deliver to a certain plan – either a sprint or a release plan
Commitment driven planning
A method of planning that you can only add as many work items to a sprint or a release as the team is willing to make a commitment towards
Communities of practice
A collection (usually informal) of team members who share a specific skill or practice (e.g. automation testers)
Compliance
Demonstrate adherence (usually mandatory) to a certain standard or framework (e.g. ISO 9000)
Conditions of satisfaction
Usually intended to mean acceptance tests or criteria that will be used to ascertain whether a certain requirement is met
Continuous integration
An extreme programming practice that believes the code should be always integrated and maintained in usable condition (used in conjunction with automated testing)
Cross-functional teams
A team containing diversity of skills that enables it to deliver a finished increment of product; adding tangible value on its own
Daily Standup; Daily Scrum
Term used to describe a daily meeting of the Scrum team
Dependencies
A requirement or condition that needs to be fulfilled before something can happen
Diehards
Opponents of Scrum who are too much in love with the current methodology
Distributed teams
Teams that are geographically dispersed (opposite of collocated)
Epic
A large or aggregated user story that captures a major requirement or theme for a project
Estimate
Forecast or educated guess about the effort or time required to accomplish some work
ETC
Acronym for Enterprise Transition Community (or Committee) – a team that manages and steers an organization’s agile transformation
FDD
Acronym for Feature Driven Development - a development methodology founded by Jeff DeLuca
Feature Teams
An adaptation of FDD that is used on many methodology that aligns formation of teams along features to be developed
Feedback
Informed opinion about some activity or work or process that will help improve it going forward
Followers
Passive opponents of the scrum methodology who like to follow the old methods
Functional managers
Managers who have reporting authority over the team members, i.e. who own the resources
Goal
Description of the end state or where we want to end up
Grooming (of backlog)
An activity that involves paying attention to – clarifying, estimating and adding more details (to the user stories in the backlog)
Grow and Split
One of the models of expanding Scrum adoption, where the team grows to an extent that it eventually needs to be split into multiple teams
Human Resources
Refers to the team members or the department in the organization that is responsible for providing systems and support to the team members
Humility
One of the desired attributes of a scrum master; to be able to put the team ahead of self (e.g. let the team take credit for the work)
IC
Acronym for Improvement Committees – often formed in an organization’s Scrum transformation to improve a specific area (e.g. Agile Testing)
IND
Short for Individualism – one of the parameters for assessing and quantifying cultural differences
Integration
Activity of combining the different elements of the system to build the entire system into a deployment ready state
Integration Team
A team dedicated to carry out integration activities and overcoming challenges found during integration
Iron Triangle
A term sometimes used to describe the Triple constraints on a project, viz. Scope, Cost and Time
Kickoff Meeting
A meeting of all the team members and stakeholders at the beginning of a project – to get everybody aligned around the goals of the project
Knowledge
One of the attributes necessary for being successful, e.g. as a scrum master – knowing the Scrum methodology
Lateral communication
Another way of describing communication that follows informal channels (as in distributed teams)
Lateral thinking
Pattern of thinking that is used to encourage diverse and innovative ideas
Manual Testing
Testing that is done by hand by a tester
Metrics
A measure or indicator that is used to quantify something
Multi-tasking
A way of working that requires working on multiple tasks at the same time
Organizational gravity
The idea that a new idea will meet some resistance and eventually be weighed down by the inertia of the organization
Osmotic communication
Communication that spreads through currents, not just to the direct recipients but those who overhear or are in the cc. list
Pair programming
Style of programming where two programmers share a terminal – one drives the coding and the other observes and provides real time feedback
Pattern
A recognizable method or formation that gives a more predictable or intended outcome
PDI
Acronym for Power-Distance-Index; one of the attributes of quantifying cultural differences
Pilot Project
A project that is chosen to test out a new method or process (e.g. pilot project for Scrum adoption)
PMO
Acronym for Project Management Office – a committee that maintains the project management processes, templates and guidelines in an organization
Potentially Shippable
System that is ready to be shipped to the customers if required
Product Backlog
A collection – usually in priority order - of all the work items related to a product that add value to a customer
Productivity
A measure of the amount of output that can be generated by a team or an individual or an organization
Product line owner
Usually higher designation than Product owner, somebody who owns the backlog for an entire product line
Product Owner
A role in the Scrum methodology that is responsible for creating and maintaining the product backlog, roadmap and provide clarity to the team
Public display of agility
A method of adopting Agile where you make it known to all that the team is practicing agile (as opposed to a stealth transition)
Quality
Sometimes defined as conformance to requirements and fitness of use. A way to measure the suitability of the product for a certain need
Refactoring
Changing the code without changing the functionality or interfaces (usually for better readability or performance or enhancing some non-functional characteristic)
Release
A process that results in the creation of an official, supported version of a product
Release Backlog
A portion of the product backlog that is targeted to be completed in a given project or release
Release Planning
The process of planning the work targeted at a particular release of a product
Requirements
A need, usually expressed by an end user or customer that the system needs to fulfill
Responsibility
One of the desired attributes of the scrum master – accepting responsibility for the scrum master duties and also about the team’s output
Retrospective (or Spring retrospective)
A meeting at the end of a Sprint to determine what is working well and what is not and how the team intends to improve the processes and working methods
Review (or Sprint review)
A meeting at the end of the sprint where the team showcases the product they have built and solicit feedback about it
Rotating scrum master
A method of appointing scrum master where the scrum master duties are changed every few sprints
Saboteurs
Active opponents of Scrum who dislike Scrum and will try their best to sabotage the scrum transformation
Scaling (e.g. Scaling Scrum)
Applying a pattern or process to a larger scale
Scrum Master
A role in the Scrum methodology who is responsible for helping the team, protecting the team and guiding the team
Scrum-of-Scrum
A meeting of representatives of multiple scrum teams working on the same project to coordinate the work of the teams
Scrum-of-scrum-of-scrums
A higher level meeting than the scrum-of-scrums for really large teams where there could be a very large number of scrum teams
Self-organization
The notion that the team does not need external intervention to organize itself around a product or a project’s work
Social loafing
Time wasted as a result of too many people involved in a single team
Space (or team space or work space)
The area of the office where the Agile team is located when they are working on the project
Specialists
Team members who specialize in a particular area or skill (e.g. user interface development)
Split and Seed
A pattern of spreading Scrum across an organization where an existing scrum team is split up and team members are assigned to “seed” scrum adoption in other teams
Sprint
A time box (usually 1-4 weeks) wherein the team tries to convert a portion of the backlog into a finished product
Sprint backlog
The subset of the product or release backlog that the team commits to delivering in a given sprint
Sprint planning
A meeting to determine the work to be done during a given sprint
Start small pattern
A pattern of agile transformation that relies on performing small pilots before attempting large scale adoption
Stealth transition
A method of carrying out agile transformation where you adopt practices slowly and without a public display so as to escape the limelight or harsh scrutiny too early in the process
Sustainable pace
A principle of agile development that the speed of development in an agile team should be such that it can be sustained over a long run
Task
An activity that is needed to be done to accomplish a certain piece of work for a user story
Task board (or progress chart)
Usually a physical board on which the pending, ongoing and done tasks are displayed
TDD
Acronym for Test-driven-development. A practice in extreme programming that advocates first writing the automated tests even before writing the code
Team member (or Developer)
A member of a scrum team who is not the scrum master or the product owner
Tech Lead
Short for Technical Lead – a senior team member who the senior most or most accomplished programmer
Technical Debt
The work that has not been completed on a given story. Example tests that are not run, refactoring that is remaining, etc. It accumulates and eventually has to be repaid with interest, hence the term debt
Test
An experiment or inspection performed to validate whether a system is working as expected
Testing pyramid
The philosophy that bulk of the tests in a project should be unit tests, followed by system tests and then the UI tests
Time-box
Limiting the amount of time available for a particular activity to create focus and urgency
Time-to-market
The lead time between the inception of an idea and the release of the product in the market
Two pizza team
Theory that the scrum team is should only be as large that you can feed them with two large pizzas
UAI
Acronym for Uncertainty Avoidance Index – one of the measures to quantify cultural differences
UED
Acronym for User Experience Design – specialized activity that designs how the users experience should be as they interact with the system
User interface (or UI) tests
Tests of the system that require the system to be exercised using the “official” or published user interface
User story (or story)
A short description of the interaction between the user and the system that will help the user accomplish a certain objective
Velocity
The amount of work completed in a given sprint
Velocity driven planning
A method of planning that uses the observed (or estimated) velocity of the team to determine how much work can be accomplished in a given time box
Vision
A short (usually one line) description of the end state for a product or a project
WAR room
A room where the team is collocated, usually to solve a problem or achieve some purpose
Waterfall
Traditional method for development, which involves a sequence of steps one following the other
Whole team responsibility
The idea that the entire team is responsible for success or failure
Working software
A system that is in working condition and can be demonstrated to an end user or customer
