Agile Glossary Terms

What is Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)?

Referred to as Story Test Driven Development (SDD), Specification by Example or Behavior Driven Development (BDD).

It involves team members with different perspectives (customer, development, testing) collaborating to write acceptance tests in advance of implementing the corresponding functionality.

It favors the creation of interfaces specific to functional testing.

What is Acceptance Testing?

is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario.

the aim is that it should be possible to automate the execution of such tests by a software tool, either ad-hoc to the development team or off the shelf.

What is AntiPattern?

are common solutions to common problems where the solution is ineffective and may result in undesired consequences.

It is a common practice that initially looks like an appropriate solution but ends up having bad consequences that outweigh any benefits

What is Automated Build?

build refers to the process that converts files and other assets under the developers’ responsibility into a software product in its final or consumable form.

• compiling source files

• packaging compiled files into compressed formats (such as jar, zip)

• producing installers

• creating or updating of database schema or data

The build is automated when these steps are repeatable, require no direct human intervention, and can be performed at any time with no information other than what is stored in the source code control repository.

What is Backlog Refinement?

Is when the product owner and some of the rest of the team, review items on the backlog to ensure the backlog contains the appropriate items, that they are prioritized, and that the items at the top of the backlog are ready for delivery.

• removing user stories that no longer appear relevant

• creating new user stories in response to newly discovered needs

• re-assessing the relative priority of stories

• assigning estimates to stories that have yet to receive one

• correcting estimates in light of newly discovered information

• splitting user stories that are high priority but too coarse-grained to fit in an upcoming iteration

What is Behavior Driven Development (BDD)?

the intent is to provide a single answer to what many Agile teams view as separate activities: the creation of unit tests and “technical” code, on one hand, the creation of functional tests and “features” on the other hand. This should lead to increased collaboration between developers, test specialists, and domain experts.

The technical aspects are placed on an equal footing with techniques encouraging more effective conversation with customers, users, and domain experts.

What is Burndown Chart?

This constitutes an “information radiator“, provided it is updated regularly. Two variants exist, depending on whether the amount graphed is for the work remaining in the iteration (“sprint burndown”) or more commonly the entire project (“product burndown”).

What is Business Agility?

is the ability of an organization to sense changes internally or externally and respond accordingly in order to deliver value to its customers.

What is Collective Ownership?

is the explicit convention that “every” team member is not only allowed, but in fact has a positive duty, to make changes to “any” code file as necessary: either to complete a development task, to repair a defect, or even to improve the code’s overall structure.

What is Continuous Deployment?

can be thought of as an extension of continuous integration, aiming at minimizing lead time, the time elapsed between development writing one new line of code and this new code being used by live users, in production.

To achieve continuous deployment, the team relies on infrastructure that automates and instruments the various steps leading up to deployment, so that after each integration successfully meets these release criteria, the live application is updated with new code.

What is Continuous Integration?

aims to lessen the pain of integration by increasing its frequency.

• minimize the duration and effort required by each integration episode

• be able to deliver a product version suitable for release at any moment

What is CRC (Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators) Cards?

are an activity bridging the worlds of role-playing games and object-oriented design.

What is Customer Development?

is a four-step framework, originally identified to discover and validate that you have identified a need(s) that customers have built the right product to satisfy that customer’s need(s), tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources in the organization to meet the demand for the product. The framework provides a way to use a scientific approach to validate assumptions about your product and business.