Week 1 - Week 2

Question 1

Definition of Software Engineering

Answer 1

the principles, methods, techniques and tools for the specification, development, management and evolution of software systems

Question 2

What are the 5 Agile Manifesto Principles?

Answer 2

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
• Working software over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• Responding to change over following a plan.

Question 3

Risks of Agile Development

Answer 3

• Lack of customer engagement.
• Stakeholder conflict.
• Complex contractual arrangements.
• Loss of organisational memory.
• Poor code quality.
• Poor team coordination or cohesion.

Question 4

Agile Methods and Practices

Answer 4

• Xtreme Programming;
• Scrum;
• Test driven development;
• Behaviour driven development;
• Refactoring;
• Pair programming;
• Retrospectives;
• Continuous integration and deployment.

Question 5

What is Scrum?

Answer 5

The scrum framework is heuristic (mental shortcuts that allow people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently);
It’s based on continuous learning and adjustment to fluctuating factors. It acknowledges that the team doesn’t know everything at the start of a project and will evolve through experience. Scrum is structured to help teams naturally adapt to changing conditions and user requirements, with re-prioritization built into the process and short release cycles so your team can constantly learn and improve.

Question 6

What are the roles in scrum?

Answer 6

Main roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner.
Other Roles: Team Manager, Quality assurance manager, Toolsmith, Chief architect, UX designer and Developer.

Question 7

Scrum Workflow

Answer 7

Most projects start with a sprint entitled a Project Launch Meeting

1- Sprint Planning Meeting.
2- Sprint Backlog.
3- Sprint Automation.
4- Sprint Execution / Daily Scrum/ Stand Up (Can take place during the sprint).
5- Sprint Review Meeting
6- Sprint Retrospective.
Repeat the process.

A release can have of one or more sprints and each sprint last 1 to 3 weeks.

Question 8

Project Launch Meeting Tasks

Answer 8

• Determines the major features to be delivered to a customer over a series of sprints.
• Understand customers long term objectives and identify a minimum viable product.
• Decide on the goals for within the project course.
• Develop an initial set of user stories.
• Refine the user stories into tasks and populate a backlog of issues on GitLab.
• Triage items in the backlog to establish cost estimates and priorities.

Question 9

Release Planning Meetings Tasks

Answer 9

• Longer projects will comprise multiple releases, each of several sprints.
• Identify the high level set of features or improvements to be delivered in a release.
• Create a roadmap of milestones aligned with your customer priorities and the customer days.
• Populate the roadmap with key features from the backlog.
• Assume that these will be changed in the sprint planning meetings.

Question 10

Sprint Planning Meeting Tasks

Answer 10

• Decide on main goal for the sprint.
• Select tasks from the backlog on your issue tracker that match the goal.
• Ensure all selected issues are sufficiently detailed, such as Cost estimates, Priorities and Assignees.
• Ensure that task cost estimates are within the project velocity.

Question 11

What is Project Velocity?

Answer 11

Velocity in Agile is a simple calculation measuring units of work completed in a given timeframe. Units of work can be measured in several ways, including engineer hours, user stories, or story points.

Question 12

Burn Down Charts

Answer 12

A burndown chart or burn down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time. The outstanding work is often on the vertical axis, with time along the horizontal. Burn down charts are a run chart of outstanding work. It is useful for predicting when all of the work will be completed.

Question 13

Reviewing a Sprint Tasks

Answer 13

• Review the progress on the project in the Sprint Review Meeting.
• Review the software team’s process in the Retrospective Meeting.

Question 14

Sprint Review Meeting Tasks

Answer 14

• Deliver and demonstrate new version of software developed over the course of the sprint.
• Summarise progress compared with planned work for sprint like Additional work completed and Missed features.
• Explain reason for deviations from plan.
• Identify new features to be added to the system.

Question 15

Key Point about Agile Methods

Answer 15

Agile methods manage project risk through frequent reviews and small adjustments to project objectives and process.