Planning for Agile Projects Flashcards
Affinity estimating
Way of grouping user stories into similar categories or collections. For example, in IT we may group by hardware, software, data and network. Groups similar stories and then uses relative estimating for the stories.
Agile discovery
Means the project team discovers through experiments and innovation the best approach to accomplish their work
Architectural spike
Is experimentation that the team performs early in the project to prove that what they’re trying to accomplish in the project is feasible, it’s a proof of concept exercise. It’s a time boxed effort to test your approach, make sure you have the right architecture and approach to build the software.
Ceremonies
Are the meetings and events in an agile project. Include sprint planning meetings, daily standup meetings, iteration reviews, and iteration retrospectives.
Course-grained requirements
Are high level chunky descriptions of the project requirements
Cone of uncertainty
Describes how a large range of uncertainty exists at the beginning of the project and over time with experience the cone becomes smaller and smaller because certainty increases.
Convergence graphs
Shows how initial estimates are flawed and over time, with progressive elaboration, that the range of variance gets smaller and smaller and the certainty of estimates increases
Epics
Large user stories that are too large for just one iteration. Epics can span diff projects in some cases. Epics are placeholders for a collection of 5 or more related user stories.
Fibonacci sequence
Pattern of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. For example, zero plus one equals one. One plus one equals two. And so on… think of the shell
Fine-grained requirements
Much more detailed and particular and are specific on acceptability requirements
First time, first-use penalty
Describes a condition where the project team has never done this type of work. Penalty is the work may take longer and/or cost more than anticipated
Ideal time
Describes the ideal amount of time it will take to create the items in the backlog. This estimate doesn’t consider interruptions or delays in the project work.
INVEST
Is a use story acronym to confirm that user stories are Independent Negotiable Valuable Estimable Small Testable
Iteration backlog
Is the backlog of use stories the team has selected to accomplish in the current iteration
Iteration H
Is called thus because it’s the iteration that involves hardening or a hardening sprint to clean up and stabilize the code. It helps wrap up the project for release and it’s all about stabilizing the code and refactoring everything for a good clean release.
Iteration zero
Is the first iteration or sprint where the team establishes the development environment. The team builds out the test servers, databases, and preparing for JUnit or NUnit testing. It’s also where your team will establish continuous integration architecture, design team rules, and if co-located setup the war room.
Parkinson’s law
States that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. Describes the danger of including padding in estimate sizes as it’ll always expand to what it’s given.
Planning poker
Uses cards with the Fibonacci sequence of 1,2,3,5,8. PM and team look at each user story and everyone privately choses whichever poker card they think correctly sizes the story. Everyone flips cards. then in unison and discussion about how to size from there.
Product boxes
Is a mockup of your project solution as if it were for sale and contained in a product box on a store shelf. The product box show the value of what the project is creating. It’s a way of visualizing what the top features of the product are.
Product roadmap
Big picture of the functionality the team’s deliverables and how that satisfies the product vision.
Product vision
Summary to communicate the project’s end goal. Vision statement describes how the project’s product will differ from competitor’s products and support the overall strategy of the organization.
Progressive elaboration
Is an adaptive planning technique that starts with a broad idea of the project and breaks it down into smaller and smaller items and components as the project progresses.
Release plan
Defines a set of requirements that when completed may be released. Determines when we are going to have releases available. Project manager, product owner, and project team determine the next set of functionalities that can be released as part of an incremental approach.
Risk-based spike
Is a brief investigation the team performs early in the project to identify and test risks within the project.
Rolling wave planning
Uses waves of planning and then executing and is characteristic of adaptive projects.
Sizing t-shirts
Determining and sorting true sizes by comparing them. It’s a type of affinity estimating.
Slicing
Process of breaking down a large user story into smaller stories or tasks.
Story points
Points assigned to user stories for purposes of sizing them. Large worth 5, medium worth 3, small worth 1 is an example.
Three Cs of user stories
Card - index card with just enough info to ID the story
Conversation - communication from between customer and development team on the details
Confirmation - customer confirmation that the story has been implemented correctly in the product
Timeboxing
A predetermined, fixed duration for a project event
User story
A small chunk of biz functionality. Written from the customer’s perspective and describe a feature of the product you’re creating
User story backlog
Also known as the product backlog, contains all the requirements in a user story format
User story formula
Includes role, functionality and benefit: As a I want this so that I’ll receive this
Value-based analysis
Examines the biz value and assesses the worth of what the project will create. This is the business benefit minus the cost of the project
Value-based decomposition
Is a visual decomposition of the project scope, requirements, features, or risk. This is a way to examine the requirements and determine the value of each requirement for prioritization and relationships among the components.
Wideband Delphi Technique
Sometimes just called the delphi technique has rounds of anonymous surveys to create estimates, gather risks, or gather requirements. It helps to build consensus without everyone following one person’s point of view.
