Agile Basics - Key Terminologies

 

If you are looking for a short read that would help you to get familiar with Agile terminologies, you are at the right place. This blog would help you to just know the basic terminologies. Reading this would only introduce you to key Agile terminologies, after which you can deep dive into any of these topics with ease.

 To start with, read the Scrum Guide which is the official handbook for the Agile framework, authored by its founders Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. It is a small guide of fewer than 20 pages and is freely downloadable from the internet, it helps you to understand the framework.

Key Terminologies - 

Agile – In simple English, Agility means to move quickly & easily. In Software Development, it means delivering a product as quickly as possible

 

Agile Manifesto – A document that outlines the central values and principles of Agile Software Development. It talks about 4 Values and 12 Principles.

Agile Frameworks – Pre-defined approaches arrived based on the Agile Manifesto. Some of the popular Agile Frameworks are Scrum, Safe, Scaled agile, and Kanban...

 

Scrum - Scrum is an agile project management framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.

 

Scrum Pillars – 3 pillars -Transparency, Inspection, Adaption

 

Scrum Values - Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage

Scrum Roles – 3 key roles – Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development team

Sprint – A time-boxed period. Goals are set and tracked for this timeframe

 

Agile Ceremonies – 5 Scrum Ceremonies - Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retro, Refinement

 

Impediment – Blocker/Issue faced which prevents progress

 

Iteration- It means repetition. A software product is completely delivered by splitting into multiple Iterations which have Design, Development, Testing, etc. in each Iteration as a repetitive process.

 

Kanban Board/Scrum Board – Tool to visualize the workflow and daily progress

Structure of Requirements – At a high level, any requirement is structured in the below hierarchy. I have given equivalent waterfall terms for better understanding and visualisation.

 Below I have given equivalent waterfall terms for better understanding and visualisation.

Epic – Similar to a one-liner Business Requirement or Vision

Feature Groups – Epic split into multiple High-level Requirements (Use Case Document)

Feature – Feature Groups split into multiple low-level Requirements, can relate to actual Functional Requirements

User Story – Features split into smaller shippable units which can be delivered in iterations

Tasks – User Stories are split into Tasks that can track Phases like Analysis, Coding, Testing, etc.

 

Story Point – Story points are units of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work

 

Acceptance Criteria – Pre-defined Criteria at the User Story level that the final product should meet, to Accept the User story

 

DoR – Definition of Readiness – This determines whether the User story is ready to be committed for the sprint. It is used as Phase Gate to enter the Sprint commitment.

 

DoD – Definition of Done – A set of conditions or checklist that defines when the User story can be called Done/Completed.

 

Backlog - In simple terms it refers to the work to be done. Product backlog refers to a prioritized list of functionalities that a product should contain. It is further allocated as Release backlog and Sprint backlog before getting committed for development

Product increment - The Product Increment is the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous Sprints.

 

Velocity - Velocity is a metric for work done in a sprint. It is seen sprint on sprint to see how the team is performing and delivering at what pace.

 

Burn down/burn up chart – Both Burndown and Burn up charts help in visualizing the progress of the sprint. Burn down shows the amount of work remaining while Burn up shows the amount of work completed. This is a key metric in Agile.

 

This summarizes the basics at a high level. 

To get the complete guide for a career transition to Scrum Master read on https://amzn.eu/d/1HywCDT.