Agile & Hybrid

Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is a foundational document published in 2001 that establishes four core values and twelve principles for agile software development, emphasizing individuals, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

Agile Principles (12 Principles)

The twelve Agile Principles are guiding statements behind the Agile Manifesto that describe how agile teams should operate, emphasizing early and continuous delivery of value, welcoming change, and sustainable development.

Scrum Framework

Scrum is a lightweight agile framework that uses fixed-length iterations called sprints, defined roles, events, and artifacts to help teams deliver complex products incrementally and iteratively.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is the accountability within Scrum responsible for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide, helping the team and organization understand Scrum theory and practice, and removing impediments.

Product Owner

The Product Owner is the Scrum accountability responsible for maximizing the value of the product by managing and ordering the Product Backlog, representing stakeholder needs, and ensuring the team builds the right thing.

Development Team (Scrum)

The Development Team, called Developers in the latest Scrum Guide, consists of the cross-functional professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment each sprint.

Sprint

A Sprint is a fixed-length timebox of one month or less in Scrum during which the team creates a usable, potentially releasable product Increment.

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning is the Scrum event that initiates each Sprint by defining the Sprint Goal, selecting Product Backlog items to work on, and creating an actionable plan for delivering the Increment.

Daily Standup (Daily Scrum)

The Daily Scrum (also called Daily Standup) is a 15-minute timeboxed event held each day of the Sprint where Developers inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary.

Sprint Review

The Sprint Review is a Scrum event held at the end of the Sprint where the Scrum Team presents the Increment to stakeholders, gathers feedback, and collaborates on what to do next.

Sprint Retrospective

The Sprint Retrospective is a Scrum event where the Scrum Team inspects how the last Sprint went with regard to people, relationships, processes, and tools, and creates a plan for improvements.

Product Backlog

The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product, serving as the single source of requirements for any changes to be made.

Sprint Backlog

The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, plus the Sprint Goal and the plan for delivering the Increment.

Increment

An Increment is a concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal, where each Increment is additive to all prior Increments and must meet the Definition of Done to be considered complete.

Definition of Done

The Definition of Done (DoD) is a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product, providing a shared understanding of what it means for work to be complete.

Definition of Ready

The Definition of Ready (DoR) is an informal checklist that a team uses to determine when a Product Backlog item is sufficiently refined and understood to be pulled into Sprint Planning.

User Stories

A User Story is a short, informal description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, typically following the format: As a [role], I want [goal], so that [benefit].

Story Points

Story points are a unit of measure for expressing the overall effort, complexity, and uncertainty involved in completing a Product Backlog item, used for relative estimation rather than measuring time.

Velocity

Velocity is the amount of work a Scrum team completes in a Sprint, typically measured in story points, used to forecast how much work the team can handle in future sprints.

Burndown Chart

A Burndown Chart is a graphical representation of work remaining versus time in a Sprint or release, showing whether the team is on track to complete the planned work.

Burnup Chart

A Burnup Chart is a graphical representation that shows the amount of work completed over time alongside the total scope, making it easy to see both progress and scope changes.

Kanban

Kanban is a lean method for managing and improving work across systems that emphasizes visualizing the workflow, limiting work in progress, managing flow, and making process policies explicit.

Kanban Board

A Kanban Board is a visual management tool that displays work items as cards moving through columns representing stages of the workflow, making the current state of work transparent to everyone.

Work in Progress (WIP) Limits

Work in Progress (WIP) Limits are constraints placed on the number of work items allowed in each stage of a workflow at any given time, designed to improve flow and reduce multitasking.

Cumulative Flow Diagram

A Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) is a stacked area chart that shows the number of work items in each workflow stage over time, used to monitor flow, identify bottlenecks, and track work in progress.

Lean Principles

Lean Principles are a set of practices derived from the Toyota Production System that focus on maximizing customer value while minimizing waste, forming a foundation for agile and Kanban practices.

Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a lean technique that visually maps all the steps in a process from concept to delivery, identifying value-adding and non-value-adding activities to eliminate waste.

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile software development framework that emphasizes technical excellence and engineering practices such as pair programming, test-driven development, continuous integration, and frequent releases.

Pair Programming

Pair Programming is an XP practice where two developers work together at one workstation, with one writing code (the driver) and the other reviewing each line in real time (the navigator).

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software development practice where developers write a failing test before writing the production code that makes it pass, following a red-green-refactor cycle.

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of frequently merging code changes into a shared repository, where automated builds and tests verify each integration to detect problems early.

Refactoring

Refactoring is the practice of restructuring existing code without changing its external behavior to improve its readability, reduce complexity, and make it easier to maintain.

Timeboxing

Timeboxing is the practice of allocating a fixed, maximum amount of time for an activity, after which the activity stops regardless of whether it is complete.

MoSCoW Prioritization

MoSCoW is a prioritization technique that categorizes requirements into four groups: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have (this time), helping teams focus on delivering the most critical items first.

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)

Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization model used in SAFe that calculates priority by dividing the Cost of Delay by the job size, ensuring the highest-value, smallest items are done first.

Planning Poker

Planning Poker is a consensus-based agile estimation technique where team members privately select cards representing their estimate, reveal them simultaneously, and discuss differences to reach agreement.

Relative Estimation

Relative Estimation is an agile technique where work items are sized in comparison to each other rather than in absolute units like hours or days, providing faster and more accurate estimates.

Iteration

An Iteration is a fixed-length timebox during which an agile team develops and delivers a working increment of the product, with each iteration building on the previous one.

Release Planning

Release Planning is an agile practice where the team and Product Owner determine the scope, timing, and goals for the next product release by mapping backlog items across future iterations based on team velocity.

Epic

An Epic is a large user story or body of work that is too big to complete in a single iteration and must be broken down into smaller, more manageable user stories.

Feature (Agile)

A Feature in agile is a service or functionality that fulfills a stakeholder need, sized to be deliverable within a single iteration or Program Increment, and typically composed of multiple user stories.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the smallest version of a product that can be released to customers to validate a business hypothesis and gather maximum learning with the least effort.

Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership is a leadership philosophy where the leader's primary role is to serve the team by removing obstacles, providing resources, and creating an environment where the team can do its best work.

Self-Organizing Teams

Self-Organizing Teams (also called self-managing teams in the 2020 Scrum Guide) are teams that determine the best way to accomplish their work without being directed by people outside the team.

Cross-Functional Teams

A Cross-Functional Team is a team that possesses all the skills and competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others outside the team.

Hybrid Approach

A Hybrid Approach combines elements of predictive (waterfall) and adaptive (agile) methods within a single project, tailoring practices to fit the project's specific needs and constraints.

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices across multiple teams, programs, and portfolios.

Agile Release Train

An Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived team of agile teams in SAFe that plans, commits, and executes together in Program Increments, aligned to a common mission and value stream.

Information Radiators

Information Radiators are highly visible displays of project information placed in prominent locations where the team and stakeholders can easily see them, promoting transparency and communication without requiring active effort.

Retrospectives (General)

A Retrospective is a recurring meeting where a team reflects on its recent work period to identify what went well, what could be improved, and what actions to take for continuous improvement.