Top 100 Agile Keywords¶

"Your guide to mastering Agile methodology."

Introducing the essential agile keywords that every agile enthusiast and professional should know. This list encompasses the most important terms used in agile practices, helping you navigate through the complex world of agile project management.

Topics¶

Overview¶

Title: "Top 100 Agile Keywords: Essential Agile Terminology"
Subtitle: "Essential Agile Terminology"
Tagline: "Your guide to mastering Agile methodology."
Description: "Explore the top 100 agile keywords essential for mastering agile practices and project management."
Keywords: Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban, Lean, Backlog, User Stories...

Cheat¶

# Top 100 Agile Keywords
- Essential Agile Terminology
- Your guide to mastering Agile methodology.
- Explore the top 100 agile keywords essential for mastering agile practices and project management.
- 5 Topics

## Topics
- Agile Foundations: Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban, Lean...
- Agile Planning: Backlog, User Stories, Epics, Roadmap, Estimation...
- Agile Ceremonies: Daily Standup, Sprint Review, Sprint Planning, Retrospective...
- Agile Roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach, Team Member...
- Agile Artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burndown Chart, Velocity...

Agile Foundations¶

"Understanding the Basics"

Agile Foundations cover the fundamental principles and methodologies like Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban, and Lean. These terms form the cornerstone of any agile practice, promoting continuous iteration and flexibility in project management.

Agile - The overarching methodology that emphasizes iterative development, collaboration, and customer feedback.
Scrum - A framework within Agile that uses fixed-length iterations called sprints.
Sprint - A time-boxed period in Scrum where specific work has to be completed and made ready for review.
Kanban - A visual tool to manage workflow and ensure efficiency by limiting work in progress.
Lean - A methodology that focuses on minimizing waste and maximizing value to the customer.

Agile Planning¶

"Strategizing for Success"

Agile Planning involves strategic terms such as Backlog, User Stories, Epics, Roadmap, and Estimation. These elements are crucial for organizing and prioritizing work in an agile environment, ensuring that teams focus on delivering value efficiently.

Backlog - The list of tasks or features that need to be addressed, prioritized by business or customer value.
User Stories - Small, user-centric descriptions of a feature, outlining the desired outcome from a user perspective.
Epics - Large bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller tasks or user stories.
Roadmap - A visual or high-level representation of the strategic direction and the progress towards goals.
Estimation - Techniques like Planning Poker used to gauge the relative size of development tasks in Scrum.

Agile Ceremonies¶

"Key Agile Meetings"

Agile Ceremonies include critical meeting formats like the Daily Standup, Sprint Review, Sprint Planning, and Retrospective. These are designed to foster communication and adaptation, helping teams to stay aligned and iterate on their workflows.

Daily Standup - A quick, daily meeting where team members report on their progress, plans, and any impediments.
Sprint Review - A session at the end of each sprint where the work completed is demonstrated to stakeholders.
Sprint Planning - A meeting that defines what can be delivered in the upcoming sprint and how that work will be achieved.
Retrospective - A reflection meeting held at the end of each sprint to look at what was successful and what could be improved.

Agile Roles¶

"Who Does What in Agile"

Understanding Agile Roles is essential for implementing agile methodologies effectively. Roles such as the Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach, and Team Member each have specific responsibilities that contribute to the agile process.

Scrum Master - Facilitates the Scrum process, helps resolve impediments, and ensures that the team adheres to Agile practices.
Product Owner - Represents the stakeholders and the voice of the customer, responsible for the backlog and prioritizing the work.
Agile Coach - Helps teams implement and improve Agile practices, providing training and addressing challenges.
Team Member - Contributes to the team's delivery in their specific areas of expertise, whether it be development, design, testing, etc.

Agile Artifacts¶

"Tools for Tracking Progress"

Agile Artifacts like the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burndown Chart, and Velocity are tools that help teams track and manage progress throughout the agile lifecycle. They provide transparency and metrics for assessing the team's pace and success.

Product Backlog - The primary list of work that needs to be done, managed by the Product Owner.
Sprint Backlog - A subset of the Product Backlog selected for development in a specific sprint.
Burndown Chart - A graphical representation of work left to do versus time.
Velocity - A measure of the amount of work a team can handle during a single sprint, used to plan future iterations accurately.

Conclusion¶

Understanding these Top 100 Agile Keywords provides a robust foundation for anyone involved in agile projects, ensuring clarity and efficiency in navigating and implementing agile methodologies.

Top 100 Agile Keywords¶

Creating a comprehensive list of the top 100 Agile definitions involves covering various aspects and methodologies of Agile project management. Here are key terms and concepts that are essential to understanding and implementing Agile practices:

General Agile Concepts¶

Agile - A set of principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams.
Scrum - A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.
Kanban - A visual system for managing work as it moves through a process. Kanban visualizes both the process (the workflow) and the actual work passing through that process.
Lean - An Agile methodology that focuses on streamlining production and eliminating waste, while striving to deliver value to the customer.
Iteration - A time-boxed period during which a development team works to complete a specific amount of work.
Sprint - The Scrum term for iteration; a time-box during which development takes place, the duration of which is agreed upon by the team and remains consistent throughout the development period.
Daily Stand-Up - A daily short meeting for the software team to discuss progress and produce a commitment for the day's work.
Sprint Retrospective - A meeting that's held after a sprint ends, where team members collectively analyze what went well and what didn’t, so they can make improvements for the next sprint.
Sprint Review - A session where the team shows what they accomplished during the sprint. Typically, this involves demonstrating the new features and is open to stakeholders.
Backlog - A list of tasks or goals that a team maintains or accomplishes. In Scrum, this refers to a prioritized list of items to be completed in the sprint.

Roles in Agile¶

Product Owner - The person responsible for bridging the gap between the customer, business stakeholders, and the development team.
Scrum Master - The role within a Scrum team responsible for ensuring the team lives by the values and practices of Scrum.
Development Team - The group of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially shippable product at the end of each sprint.
Stakeholder - Anyone outside the Scrum team with a strong interest in the product.

Planning and Estimation¶

User Stories - Short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system.
Planning Poker - An Agile estimating and planning technique that uses consensus to estimate relative sizes of user stories or the effort required to develop them.
Velocity - A measure of the amount of work a Team can tackle during a single Sprint and is the key metric in Scrum.
Burndown Chart - A visual measurement tool that shows the completed work per day against the projected rate of completion for the current project release.
Story Points - A unit of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work.
Task Board - A physical or digital board to visualize work at various stages of the process using cards to represent work items and columns to represent each stage of the process.

Practices and Techniques¶

Refactoring - The process of restructuring existing computer code without changing its external behavior.
Continuous Integration (CI) - The practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline several times a day.
Test-Driven Development (TDD) - A software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: requirements are turned into very specific test cases, then the software is improved to pass the new tests.
Pair Programming - An Agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in.
Code Review - The systematic examination of computer source code intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills.
Definition of Done (DoD) - A clear and concise list of criteria which must be met before a product increment "often a user story" is considered "done".
Release Planning - The process of planning the release of software through multiple sprints, including defining and prioritizing product backlog items in a release backlog.

Values and Principles¶

The Agile Manifesto - A formal proclamation of four key values and twelve principles to guide an iterative and people-centric approach to software development.
Adaptive Planning - A core value of Agile development, where teams expect the plans to change and adapt as they learn more about the project.
Customer Collaboration - Emphasizing the involvement of the customer throughout the development cycle to ensure alignment of final deliverables with customer needs and expectations.
Sustainable Development - Advocating for a pace and process that can be maintained indefinitely.
Simplicity - The art of maximizing the amount of work not done—essential.
Empirical Process Control - A core principle of Scrum, involving transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Agile Methodologies¶

Extreme Programming (XP) - An Agile software development framework that aims to produce higher quality software, and higher quality of life for the team.
Feature-Driven Development (FDD) - A model-driven, short-iteration process that consists of five basic activities: developing an overall model, building a feature list, planning by feature, designing by feature, and building by feature.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) - An Agile project delivery framework, initially used as a software development method.
Crystal - A family of methodologies that focuses on efficiency and habitability as the primary factors in project success.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) - A set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices.
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) - A framework for scaling agile development to multiple teams.
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) - A process decision framework that enables simplified process decisions around incremental and iterative solution delivery.
Agile Project Management (APM) - A flexible and interactive project management approach that adapively and iteratively incorporates changes.

Agile Artifacts¶

Product Backlog - An ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product.
Sprint Backlog - A list of tasks identified by the Scrum team to be completed during the Scrum sprint.
Increment - The sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and all previous Sprints.
Impediment List - A visible list of issues that may block the team from achieving their goals.
Definition of Ready (DoR) - A checklist of the necessary conditions for a product backlog item before it can be considered ready for inclusion in a sprint.

Agile Practices¶

Agile Modeling - A collection of innovative, user-centered approaches to systems development.
Agile Coaching - The process of guiding and mentoring individuals and teams in the concepts and practices of Agile.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) - An Agile software development technique that encourages collaboration between developers, QA, and non-technical or business participants in a software project.
Swarming - A strategy where the entire team focuses on a few stories at a time, completing them before moving on to others, thus maximizing the team's work flow.
Mob Programming - All the brilliant minds working together on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.
User Story Mapping - A visual exercise that helps product managers and development teams define the work that will create the most delightful user experiences.
Continuous Delivery (CD) - A software development discipline where you build software in such a way that the software can be released to production at any time.

Agile Metrics and Monitoring¶

Cycle Time - The total time from the start to the end of your process, as defined by your team.
Lead Time - The amount of time that elapses between when a work item starts and when a work item finishes.
Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) - A useful tool for tracking and forecasting project progress in an Agile project.
Burn-up Chart - A chart that shows the progress of stories done over time.
Escaped Defects - A metric that counts the number of defects discovered by users after the product has been delivered.
Throughput - The number of units of work a team can complete during a specified time frame.

Agile Culture and Mindset¶

Servant Leadership - Leadership philosophy in which the main goal of the leader is to serve. A Servant Leader shares power, puts the needs of the team first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.
Team Autonomy - The degree to which a team can self-organize to manage their own workloads and make decisions independently.
Fail Fast - A philosophy that values extensive testing and incremental development to determine whether an idea has value.
Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) - The ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes, which can lead to incremental improvements over time or breakthrough improvements all at once.
Respect for People - A fundamental part of the Agile mindset that involves respecting the work and contributions of all team members.
Transparency - The practice of being clear and open about the processes, progress, and decisions in Agile projects.

Advanced Agile Practices¶

Value Stream Mapping - A lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer.
Specification by Example - A collaborative approach to defining requirements and business-oriented functional tests for software products based on capturing and illustrating requirements using realistic examples instead of abstract statements.
Impact Mapping - A strategic planning technique that helps organizations manage flexible roadmaps for change by clearly communicating assumptions, helping teams align their activities with overall business objectives.
Continuous Exploration (CE) - A process in SAFe frameworks for continuously exploring market and user needs, and defining a Vision, Roadmap, and set of Features that address those needs.
Feature Toggling - A technique allowing developers to hide, enable, or disable a feature during runtime, making it easier to manage releases and test new features.

Agile Facilitation Techniques¶

Retrospective Prime Directive - A guideline held during retrospectives to ensure that discussions are positive and productive, stating "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
Liberating Structures - A collection of facilitation strategies intended to enhance relational coordination and trust among team members, making it easier to include and unleash everyone in shaping the future.
Open Space Technology - A technique for hosting meetings or conferences where participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.
Planning Dojo - A training session for Agile teams to practice estimation and planning techniques in a risk-free environment.
Fishbowl - A conversation method used for panel discussions, where a few team members engage in discussion while others listen, taking turns in the discussion.

Agile Leadership and Governance¶

Management 3.0 - A movement of innovation, leadership, and management, which emphasizes managing the system, not the people.
Holacracy - A method of decentralized management and organizational governance, in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top.
Intrinsic Motivation - A drive to engage in tasks that are inherently satisfying and enjoyable, essential for Agile teams to foster innovation and commitment.
Empirical Control Theory - A framework in Scrum based on the three ideas of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
Lean Governance - Applying lean principles to the governance processes, reducing waste and focusing governance efforts on creating value.

Agile Metrics and Measurements¶

Net Promoter Score (NPS) - A metric used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research.
Happiness Metric - An Agile metric used to track and measure the happiness and contentment of a team over time, helping to gauge overall team health.
Flow Efficiency - A measure of how well a team is delivering without delays, calculated as the ratio of active work time to total time.
Earned Business Value (EBV) - A metric to measure the value a project has earned based on the cost incurred and the value delivered to the business so far.
Release Burndown - A chart that shows the remaining work in the sprint backlog. It helps teams predict when all of the work for a release will be completed.

Agile Tools and Technologies¶

JIRA - A popular tool used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management.
Trello - A visual collaboration tool that creates a shared perspective on any project in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.
Slack - A messaging app for teams that makes it easy to set up channels for sharing information and integrating with other tools and services.
Asana - A task and project management tool that helps teams organize, track, and manage their work.
Confluence - A collaboration software program developed and published by Atlassian to help teams collaborate and share knowledge efficiently.

Emerging Trends in Agile¶

DevSecOps - An approach to culture, automation, and platform design that integrates security as a shared responsibility throughout the entire IT lifecycle.
Business Agility - The ability of an organization to adapt quickly to market changes, internally and externally, and respond rapidly and flexibly to customer demands.
Digital Transformation - The use of digital technologies to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises.
Agile at Scale - Applying Agile methodologies to larger, even enterprise-wide, projects involving greater numbers of teams.
Remote Agile Practices - Techniques and adaptations of Agile methodologies that support distributed teams to collaborate effectively when not co-located.

Cultivating an Agile Culture¶

Psychological Safety - A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
Community of Practice - A group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
Feedback Loops - The process of using outputs as new inputs to refine and improve processes or products continuously.
Agile Transformation - The process of transitioning an entire organization to a more responsive, effective, and iterative way of working based on Agile principles.
Coaching and Mentoring - Supporting and encouraging people and teams as they learn and grow within an Agile environment.

This expanded list covers a full spectrum of Agile methodologies, practices, roles, metrics, and cultural elements, providing a comprehensive understanding suitable for both novices and experienced practitioners in Agile environments.