Agile Process in Project Management

100-point method, 100-dollar, Fixed sum, Fixed allocation

a prioritization technique where each participant has 100 points that they can distribute across the available options according to their importance.

3 C’s of User Stories

a model for writing user stories using three essential components: Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. User stories are written down on cards, they’re discussed to develop a common understanding, and their completion must be confirmed through acceptance criteria.

Absolute estimation

a technique that assigns a specific unit of time, effort, or cost to a work item without comparing it to other similar other similar work items.

Acceptance criteria

A set of required standards, capabilities, or conditions, that a user story, task, feature, or product backlog item must meet in order to be accepted by the product owner.

Adaptive approach, Change-driven approach

a project development approach suitable for projects with high levels of uncertainty and volatility, and in which requirements are likely to change throughout the project.

Agile

a particular mindset that is based on a well defined set of values and principles.

Agile Center of Excellence (CoE), Agile PMO, Value Delivery Office (VDO)

A department that provides support and guidance for Agile adoption and practices.

Agile Coach

a project management professional who helps scale Agile practices across a team or organization.

Agile Framework

a set of principles and practices designed to facilitate the execution of a project in alignment with the Agile mindset.

Agile Manifesto

a document written by “The Agile Alliance", that identifies 4 core values and 12 principles.

Agile mindset

the way of thinking and acting according to Agile values and principles.

Agile practices

are the various activities and processes used by an Agile team to apply the Agile mindset to their workload.

Agile principles

12 guiding principles that make up the foundation of agile.

Agile Transformation

the process of shifting an organization to agile ways of working.

Agile Values

consist of 4 values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and Responding to change over following a plan.

Artifact

presents any information depicting the product and the actions taken by the Agile team to keep the project work aligned with project requirements and business goals. It can be a user story, product backlog, burndown chart, product increment, etc..

Backlog refinement, Backlog grooming

The process of regularly reviewing and updating the product backlog to ensure it is accurate, detailed, estimated, and prioritized.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)

A software development process that encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and non-technical or business participants.

Blackout period

when the product development work needs to be paused for a predefined period in order to dedicate time to rolling out a new product increment.

Blended agile

Consists of implementing a hybrid framework that combines different practices and elements of two or more Agile frameworks.

Burndown chart

demonstrates the remaining work the project team has to complete, illustrated with a line that goes downwards.

Burnup chart

displays the amount of work completed, represented with a line going upward.

Ceremony

a meeting with a defined length, frequency, and goal. There are four main ceremonies in Agile: the sprint planning meeting, the daily stand-up meeting, the sprint review meeting, and the sprint retrospective meeting.

Commitment

a flexible agreement based on the team's best understanding during planning.

Continuous delivery

A series of automated processes for delivering software from development to production.

Continuous deployment

Automatically releasing code changes to production after passing all tests.

Cross-functional team

is made of members with diverse substantial skill sets, making it possible to produce the project deliverables with no external dependency.

Crystal Family Of Methodologies

A set of agile software development approaches. The darker the color the bigger the team is and the more complex the project.

Cumulative Flow Diagram

A visual representation of the status of work items in the workflow, showing work in progress, completed, and remaining.

Customer-Centric Development

Focusing on delivering value to customers through iterative feedback and improvements.

Daily Scrum, Daily standup, Standup meeting

a short daily meeting designed to let the team plan out its work for the day and identify any obstacles that could impact that work.

DEEP

An acronym for Detailed, Emergent, Estimated, Prioritized. A set of criteria that is used to assess and create a good product backlog.

Definition of Done (DoD)

A set of criteria that a product or increment must meet to be considered ready for use. These criteria represent the product’s quality checklist.

Definition of Ready (DoR)

A checklist of user-centric criteria that must be met in order to consider a user story ready for execution, therefore moving it from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.

Development team

a small team of 10 members or less that is committed to delivering a potentially shippable product increment at the end of each sprint.

DevOps

a combination of the terms “Developers” and “Operations”. It's a software development strategy that was created to help the teams in an organization work together more efficiently to produce higher-quality products and apps.

Disciplined Agile (DA), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

a scaled Agile framework that puts individuals first and offers only lightweight guidance to help teams optimize their processes according to the unique needs o each specific project.

Ease of Use, Usability

How much effort it takes for the user of the product to access its functionality.

Empirical measurement

Making decisions based on observation and experimentation rather than theory and predictions.

Epic

Represents a business value to the customer. May fit or span across more than one release.

Escaped defects

The number of defects per unit of time, per sprint, or per release, that the agile team missed or did not find, and which are detected by end-users after the product release.

Exploratory testing

a type of software testing in which the tester explores the application without predefined test cases to identify defects.

Extreme Programming (XP)

an Agile framework that targets speed and simplicity with short development cycles.

Fail fast

testing assumptions and ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible, before investing too much time, money, or resources into hem. By failing fast, you can learn what works and what doesn't.

Feature

Represents a shippable component for the customer. Usually fits in a release.

Feature chart

Displays completed features using a burnup chart or remaining features using a burndown chart.

Feature-Driven Development (FDD)

An Agile software development method suitable for larger-scale projects. It adopts short iterations and uses features as basic units of work.

Fibonacci sequence

A scoring scale for estimating agile story points. The Fibonacci sequence goes as follows: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, … and so on.

Flow

The smooth progression of tasks through a process to completion.

Go Live

The moment a product increment gets shipped to end

Ideal time, Ideal hour, Ideal day

Refers to the time, hour, or day it would take to complete a given task assuming zero interruptions.

Impediment, Blocker, Bottleneck

anything that slows the team down and delays the completion of project work.

Increment

a tested and accepted deliverable at the end of each sprint, representing a functional subset of the project’s overall outcome.

Incremental approach

Delivers ready-to-use product functionalities to the customer at the end of each iteration.

Incremental budgeting, Incremental funding

Allocating budgets in small increments based on project progress and needs.

INVEST

An acronym representing a set of criteria to assess the quality of the created user story. It stands for Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.

I-SHAPED

describes a team member who has deep specialization and expertise in one domain but no interest in participating or getting involved in work outside o that domain.

Iteration

the process of repeatedly refining and enhancing a project or product through a cyclical approach, with feedback from each cycle informing the next.

Iterative approach

enables step-by-step development with frequent reviews and feedback loops based on a roughly finalized part of a project or product.

Kanban board, Task board

an agile project management tool designed to help visualize work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize efficiency.

Kanban framework, Kanban approach, Kanban method

an agile method that aims at continuous improvement, flexibility in task management, and enhanced workflow.

Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

an agile framework for scaling Scrum to multiple teams who work together on a single product.

Lean Software Development

a concept that emphasizes optimizing efficiency and minimizing waste in the software development process.

Minimum Marketable Product (MMP)

A release-ready version of the product with the minimum features required to fulfill the end user’s needs.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Proof of Concept (PoC)

comprises a product’s basic functionalities and features. It’s often presented to early users to solicit feedback and validate the product's initial idea.

Persona

a fictional model of a potential user of the product. It is used to help the agile team understand the needs, behaviors, goals, and pain points of the target audience.

Planning poker, Scrum poker, Pointing poker

a gamified, card-based estimation method where each member uses poker cards to estimate and vote on each user story.

Potentially shippable product increment

A completed and tested set of features that is demonstrated during the sprint review in order to be released to end users.

Product Backlog

a prioritized list of all of the desired features, enhancements, bug fixes, and other work that needs to be done on a project.

Product Backlog Item (PBI)

a single element of work that exists in the product backlog that can consist of a feature, user story, defect, technical work, knowledge acquisition, etc.

Product owner

serves as a Single Point Of Contact (SPOC) between the stakeholders and the development team, facilitating communication and guiding the product's development according to the defined vision and roadmap.

Product roadmap

A high-level map created and maintained by the product owner to give context to the vision by defining the product development milestones.

Product vision

A brief statement of the desired future state that would be achieved by developing and deploying a product.

Progressive elaboration

Consists of starting with a broadly outlined idea and scope, and with more information becoming available, a specific and detailed plan is elaborated.

Relative estimation

a technique used to estimate the size and complexity of tasks and stories, such as story points, by comparing them to each other.

Release

the final delivery of a software package after the completion of multiple iterations or sprints.

Release Plan

maps out how and when features or functionalities will be released and delivered to users.

Risk-adjusted Backlog

a backlog that includes work and actions to address threats and opportunities.

Risk-value matrix

a risk management tool that allows the prioritization of user stories according to their risk and value.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

a structured framework designed to implement agile practices at an enterprise level.

Scaled Agile frameworks, Enterprise Agile frameworks

frameworks that apply Agile principles and practices across multiple teams and departments within an organization. Examples of Scaled Agile frameworks include SAFe, Scrum o Scrums, Large Scale Scrum, and Disciplined Agile.

Scrum

the most common Agile framework, designed to guide teams in the incremental delivery of a product.

Scrumban

Incorporates Scrum practices with the Kanban method to provide more flexibility for teams considering a transition from Scrum to Kanban or vice versa.

Scrum Master

Responsible for facilitating the Scrum process, ensuring that the Scrum team adheres to its principles and practices.

Scrum of Scrums

a scaled agile framework that offers a way to connect multiple scrum teams who need to work together on a complex product.

Scrum pillars

Scrum is based on 3 pillars: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.

Scrum team

a small team composed of the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development team.

Scrum values

The five Scrum values are commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.

Self-organized team

A team that works autonomously and assumes responsibility for achieving the project objectives without relying on outsiders.

Servant leadership

a leadership style where the leader's primary focus is on serving and empowering their team members.

Spike

a special type of user story that is used to gain the knowledge necessary to reduce the risk of a technical approach, better understand a requirement, or increase the reliability of a story estimate.

Sprint

a time-boxed iteration that usually lasts 1 to 4 weeks, during which the development team works collaboratively to deliver a potentially shippable product increment.

Sprint backlog

a list of work items that is selected from the product backlog by the Scrum team to be completed during the sprint.

Sprint commitment

the development team's agreement to complete the items on the Sprint Backlog within the sprint.

Sprint goal

the objective set for the sprint that describes a business purpose or value. If the sprint goal becomes obsolete, only the Product Owner has the authority to cancel the Sprint.

Sprint planning, Iteration Planning

the process of defining what can be delivered in the sprint or iteration and how that work will be achieved.

Sprint Retrospective, Reflection

a review conducted after a sprint completion to determine what went well and what didn’t to identify areas of improvement.

Sprint review, Sprint Demo, Iteration Review, Demonstration

a meeting held at the end of a sprint to present a potentially shippable product increment to the product owner and key stakeholders and get their feedback.

Story Point

a unitless, arbitrary measure of the required effort for implementing a task or user story, taking into consideration its complexity and associated unknowns.

Story pointing

a measurement technique used in relative estimating to determine the size of a work unit.