Agile Methodology Glossary, Terminology | Part-2

N-Z

N

Niko-niko Calendar

The word "niko-niko" comes from Japanese word niko, which means "smile". It's a visual tool in calendar format that helps track a team's emotions, happiness index in an agile environment. The calendar layout includes columns that contain all team members names. At the end of each working day, each team member summarize the mood they had during the workday. Entire process helps to build trust, and empathy.

O

Open Space

It's a self-organized meeting format where participants create and manage the agenda. It's also called an "Unconference" because it's similar to the part of a conference where people gather around a table for coffee after session are over. It operate under a small set of guiding principles.

P

Product Owner (PO)

Product Owner is a key member of the product development team who is responsible for maximizing the value of the team's work for the company. The PO act as the primary customer advocate and is the link between the business and technology strategy. They are the project management lead for the product development team. Product Owner responsibilities includes : creating, managing and refining product backlog, communicating with client, prioritizing tasks, overseeing the development team's tasks and making sure the company derives as much as value as possible from the team's work.

Product Management (PM)

It's a framework and a flexible approach to product strategy and implementation that involves frequent iterations, product improvements, and faster feedback. Well suited for web and software solutions. Key Ingredients : Defining user stories Deciding what to do and when Begin open to changes along the way Prioritizing features for implementation which draw a maximum value for the customer Collaboration with engineers to estimate features, define requirements, and create a release plan Involve customers in an entire journey

Project Management (PM)

It's an iterative approach to planning and guiding project process. It breaks down the project process into small cycles. It celebrate the cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement.

Pair Programming

It's an agile software development technique where two programmers work together at a single workstation to design, code, and unit test user stories. Two programmers usually equally skilled , take turns as the drive and navigator. The driver writes the code and navigator review the code as it's written and provides the feedback.

The goal is to free the driver focus on the technical aspects of the task, while the navigator acts as a guide and safety net. Pair programming originated from Extreme Programming and used in scrum teams. It is very useful to build a bond with the fellow programmer, achieve higher quality code and products, skill transfer.

Persona (User / Customer)

It's a detailed description of a typical product user, either real or hypothetical. Personas are often written document that includes a name, location, behavior, challenges, needs, photo, profession, and other details. Agile teams uses persona to understand customers needs, expectations and deliver a better product with an empathy. It's a byproduct of the requirements investigation process, rather than being made up.

Planning Poker

It's a consensus-based technique used by agile teams to estimate time and effort required to complete each initiative in a product backlog. Also known as Scrum Poker as participants use physical cards that look like playing cards. The default scale for Planning Poker is the Fibonacci scale, which is a sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of two numbers before it.

The Fibonacci scale is 1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and 34.

Steps involved in Poker Card -

1. The product owner or customer reads a user story or describes a feature to the estimators.

2. Each estimator receives a deck of cards that have values like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100.

3. The estimators discuss the feature.

4. Each estimator secretly chooses a card to represent their estimate.

5. All estimators reveal their cards at the same time.

6. If all estimators choose the same value, that becomes the estimate.

7. If not, the estimators discuss their estimates.

Points (estimates in)

It's the process of assigning story points to a user story or product backlog item. It's a way to measure the effort needed to complete a user story, story points are the most accurate than other estimation techniques.

Product Backlog

It's a prioritized list of deliverables (new features) that should be implemented as part of a project or product development in agile development. Deliverables derived from the product planning and product roadmap. What includes in backlog: features, bugs, client feedback, improvement.

Primarily Product Owner (PO) add, refines the backlog items along with agile team, scrum master and even SPOC from the client.

Project Chartering

It's a living, updatable document that serves as a roadmap for an Agile project. It outlines, the project scope, mission, values, objectives, key-results, deliverables, outcome, and it is created at the beginning of the project and serve as guiding document. It helps to foster clarity, transparency, alignment, adaptability.

Q

Quick Design Session

A meeting between two or more developers who use a whiteboard and CRC cards to discuss simple design choices that have far-reaching consequences - true democratic process. Quite popular in Extreme Programming (XP).

R

Retrospective

A meeting where agile development team interacts with open minds, discuss past work and identify improvements, and set up action items which can be measurable. Overall decorum of meeting looks like: 1. Evaluate last sprint work, achievements, challenges faced, team dynamics, process. 2. Identify what went well? what went wrong? 3. Create an action item to improve overall team's performance and track the same on regular sprint plan or retrospective meetings. 4. Ethos is to learn from each other success and mistakes 5. Don't get too personal and take it easy

Releases

A good practice that allows dev team to release products to end users more frequently. The goal is to get new or updated products to users quickly, gather feedback, and respond to change requests. Feedback can be critical or appreciative. Release Early, Release Often - RERO.

Refactoring

Improving internal code structure without affecting external behavior or functionality of an API, Application. Objective is to improve code quality, testability, and product quality in each iteration. It's an organic process. To reduce technical debt, make code more cleaner and to prepare for a scalability, refactoring activities has to be performed on a regular intervals.

Relative estimation

It's one of the approach, in which estimation of a new task / feature is compared and inspired by a similar task have been completed in the past. It is also called as relative sizing.

Rules of Simplicity

It is tenth principle from the Agile Manifesto, Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential. This principle encourages teams to do the things that will have the most impact, and to focus on eliminating waste. It is same as 80/20 rule - the concept that you can usually get 80% of your intended results with just 20% of the work.

S

Scrum Master

A professional who leads a team through a project using agile project management techniques. A Scrum Master facilitator of scrum, a lightweight framework which focusing on time boxed iteration called sprints. Core responsibilities are - a coach and guid which ensures team understand scrum principles, framework arrange daily meetings, foster open communications between members, maximize productivity, conduct all ceremonies of sprint and monitor product releases.

(Technical) Scrum Master

A scrum master, actively involved in technical development of a project, which includes: should have understanding of SDLC principles, updating the program on their machine, fixes bugs, running unit tests, coordinating with QA team and facilitating sprint planning, sprint review, stand up calls, sprint retrospective. And also includes managerial responsibilities : Helping communicate the owner's wish list to the project team, arranging, prioritizing, refining the backlog items.

Sprint Planning

It is one of the ceremony of an Agile Project Management, to plan the next sprint. Core ethos includes: collectively team decide which user stories to complete in upcoming sprint based on client's and product owner's expectation and needs.

Sub-Task

A specific and smallest piece of work that needs to be completed to deliver a story. It's a breakdown of one level of Task. Dividing work into granular level, loosely coupled component of a work which can be completed end-to-end without affecting the behavior of current workflow or system.

Story Sizing

A systematic process in Agile management that estimate the time and effort required to complete the user story in a sprint. It's an estimation value. Steps involved while sizing : understand the complexity, efforts, and relative size of features. It's more accurate than other estimation techniques like time-based estimates because they account for factors like task complexity and uncertainty.

Spike

A short and time-boxed research activity that helps team learn more about a specific issue or topic. Spike is used when there is an uncertainty around a task or requirements. They allow team member to gather knowledge and perform experiments before committing to a solution or feature to avoid pitfall and ensure best results. Even during an active sprint, spike can discover, a developer has to use stand-up call to update scrum master and team and create a separate user story / task.

Scope Creep

In project management, scope creep is when a project's requirements or deliverable increase beyond what was originally defined in the project plan. This happens when client or project manager request for an additional work as the project progress or when there are internal miscommunication or disagreements. Scope creep can start with small changes that seem reasonable at that time, but can quickly add up and become more problematic over time.

Sprint Review

A collaborative meeting held at the end of every sprint. In this team run through work items they have completed during the sprint or iteration. A sprint review ensures key stakeholders are up to date, and it enables them to provide feedback. It's a timeboxed event to a maximum 1.30 to 2 hour for a 2 weeks sprint and maximum 4 hours for a one sprint.

Sprint Release

A sprint is a time box for completing a defined set of work, whereas a release brings a new product experience to market once it is ready to be delivered. It occurs at end of a successfully sprint or after several sprints.

Sprint Deployment

The deployment happens when sprint tasks development is completed, tested by qa team, and all features are merged, and ready for product use.

Scrum

It's one of project management framework designed to help teams to collaborate on complex products iteratively and incrementally to deliver high value product within agile. It uses all the core principle and values of agile to define methods to facilitate a project. Agile team use to self-organize tasks and work towards a common goal,

Stand Up Calls

A daily stand-up or scrum call, is a short meeting held by agile teams to discuss project progress and identify blockers. The term stand-up comes from the expectation that participants stand to keep the meeting brief and to the point. Core question structure of the call is, 1) what did you do yesterday? 2) what will you do today? 3) what is blocking your progress?

Success Criteria

Once product is release in production we need to observe and monitor the product. Few success factor includes : business value, customer satisfaction, product quality, cost benefits.

Scrum of Scrum

It's a scaled agile technique that offers a way to connect multiple teams who need to work together to deliver complex solutions. Scale scrum consist of a large group (over a dozen people) consisting of dividing the groups into agile team of 5-10.

Scrumban

It's a project management methodology that combines the best features of Scrum and Kanban. It was originally developed to help teams transition between the two methodologies. Scrumban uses Scrum's stable structure of sprints, standup and retrospectives and adds Kanban's visual workflow and work-in-progress limitation. Scrumban uses tools like a Scrumban board with WIP limits, task cards, and lead cycle time to organize and monitor the process. These tools help visualize and control the process so that it delivers the most value.

Sign up for Tasks

Members of an Agile development team normally choose which task to work on, rather than begin assigned work by a manager. Their choice may be negotiated in discussion with other team members.

Simple Design

It's a strategy focuses on making software concise and crisp, rather than elaborate or artificial. It is also known as a minimal decision.

Team that uses simple design follow principles -

1. Design is on-going activity

2. Evaluate quality by code simplicity

3. Consider design cost

4. Delay design decisions

Story Mapping

In agile, it's a technique to visualize user's journey through a product or system. It helps to break down the user experience into smaller, more manageable pieces called user stories. The goal is to create a holistic view of hos the user stories fit into the overall user experience.

Story mapping session follow these steps :

1. Define user persona

2. Discover User goals

3. Map the user journey

4. Write user stories

5. Prioritize the backlog

6. Slice out the MVP

Story Splitting

It's a technique to break down large story into smaller, more manageable piece. The focus is to create increments of user value and improve collaboration that can be implemented quickly. However, it's not about breaking it into component tasks, but rather complete stories or slices that still deliver value to the user

Sustainable Pace

It's an idea in an agile development that team can maintain a work pace indefinitely without needing to rest or pause between iteration of work. It's based on the idea that high performance is more like a marathon than a sprint.

T

Task

It's a smallest unit of user story / work and are often broken down into smaller manageable piece. They are created by team during project planning process and can be anything the team is working on, like product functionality, bug fix, content, design, prototype.

T-shirt Sizing

It's a relative estimation technique used in agile project management to estimate the size, complexity, or effort required for task or project. It involves assigning tasks to different sizes of T-shirts, such as Extra Small (XS), Small (S), Medium (M), Large (L), instead of using precise numbers or detailed metrics. This estimation can be applied to User Stories, and Task. It's a time saving and help to deal with a large product backlog items.

Task Board

It's a visual tool that helps teams and individuals organize their workflow and track project progress. It's often the focal point of Agile projects, such as during scrum meetings and stand-ups.

Test Driven Development (TDD)

TDD is a software practice that's well-suited to agile development and it involves writing tests before writing code, and then following a cyclical process of improving the code to make the tests pass.

Team

A group of individuals with different multipurpose skills who are dedicated to the success of an Agile project through all stages of development, testing, and delivery. Agile teams are usually made up of 5–10 people who have been carefully selected for their expertise in specific business areas. It is also called as a Squad

Team Room

A team room in agile is a dedicated space for a team to work together during a project, separate from other groups. It can be an office area or a feature in a digital tool. A space to hold the daily stand-up, near where the iteration or Kanban board and graphs are prominently displayed.

The Three C's

Collaboration, Communication, and Coordination; these principles are essential to deliver high quality product that meet customer expectation while adapting to changing requirements.

Three Amigos

It's a key practice in agile development that involves collaboration between three key roles in software development process: Business, Development, and Testing / QA. Three amigos refers to the primary perspective to examine an increment of work before (business), during (development) and after development (QA)

Three Questions

In Agile, the three questions are a popular format for daily scrum meetings: What did you do yesterday that helped the team get closer to the sprint goal? What will you do today that will help the team get closer to the sprint goal? Are there any impediments that will prevent my team from getting closer to the sprint goal?

Timebox

In agile project management, a timebox is a set of amount of time allotted to an activity or task. Timebox help team minimize risk by using careful planning and estimation technique to achieve successful outcome. it helps to improve, prioritization, discipline.

U

Ubiquitous Language

It's a core concept in Domain-Driven Design (DDD) that encourages that creation of a shared language between all stakeholders involved in a project, This shared language allows for communication between all actors in the project context. such as developers, domain expert, and end-users. The idea is that by eliminating the linguistic barriers between different groups.

Unit Testing

It's a software testing method that verifies that individual units of a software system work as intended and meet requirements. In agile, unit tests are short programs that programmers write and maintain to exercise a small part of a product's source code and check the results. The outcome of unit test is either pass or fail. Unit test is mandatory to implement a successful DevOps practices within team.

Usability Testing

It's a process that involves conducting regular, small scale tests of a product at every stage of it's development. The goal is to improve the user experience (UX) and maximize the product's quality and value before it's launched. Agile usability testing can help to: reduce time and money wasted in design and development, increase customer engagement and satisfaction, ensure a positive customer experience.

User Stories

It's a way to describe a software feature from the perspective of the end user. They are fundamental part of Agile methodologies like Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP). It is also refers to a short, informal, and simple description of software feature.

User Story Template

A common format for writing user stories in agile development.

V

Velocity Chart

It display the average amount of work a scrum team completes during a sprint. Teams can use velocity to predict how quickly they can work through the backlog because the report tracks the forecasted and completed work over several sprints. The more sprints the more accurate the forecast. It's a visual representation of the effort, YAxis - Story Points vs XAxis - Sprints.

Velocity

Velocity is a metric that calculates how long user stories within a particular sprint have taken to complete against their estimates. It show team's efficiency over a couple of sprints.

Version Control

It is also called as Source Control, it is a software tool helps teams manage changes to files over time, including code, documents, and other information. It helps to collaborate within team and continuous delivery. Example : git, gitlab, svn, MS team foundation.

Note: I have prepare this list with the best of my lived experiences, and quite helpful for a someone who has just started (beginner) with an Agile Methodology and Development.

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