Scrum & Agile Dictionary (Lingo)

 Acceptance Criteria 

Acceptance Criteria are a set of conditions that a software must meet in order to be accepted by a customer or stakeholder.

Acceptance Testing

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

Anti-Pattern

Anti-Patterns in Agile are habits that are frequently exhibited but overall ineffective or maybe even harmful.

Agile Mindset

An Agile Mindset is about creating and responding to change in uncertain and turbulent environments. 

It is a set of attitudes that an individual should have. 

These attitudes are inspired by Agile values and principles, such as: Respect, Collaboration, Continuous improvement, Focus on delivering value.

Agile Release Train

An Agile Release Train is a SAFe term used for the combination of multiple Agile software development teams used to tackle large enterprise-scale projects. Think of it as a mega Scrum team!

Agile transformation

Agile transformation is the process of transitioning your entire organization to adapt to the Agile mindset. This involves creating a work environment that supports innovation and flexibility. 

Agilist 

An Agilist is a person that understands, applies, and is a proponent of agile principles to help build high performing teams that deliver valuable working software

Anti-pattern 

An Anti-pattern is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive.

Backlog Refinement

It’s a Scrum meeting where the Scrum team organizes the backlog to make sure it’s ready for the next sprint or iteration by understanding the user stories, adding information, breaking them down if need be, adding estimation.

Backend Developers

A backend developer is one who makes use of the technology required to develop the products for the backend of any website

Bottleneck

Bottlenecks are issues that can completely slow down the development process.

Bug

A Bug is a programming defect or glitch that creates errors within a system or software. Removing these bugs is a practice called debugging.

Burndown Chart

A burndown chart is an important chart that helps Agile leaders track the amount of work left in the sprint, the time remaining to complete the work. The x-axis represents the time left in a sprint, and the y-axis represents the number of tasks.

Burnup Chart

A burnup chart an important chart that helps Agile leaders visualize the work the Scrum team has completed in the sprint & the total amount of work in the project. The x-axis represents the time remaining in the sprint, and the y-axis represents the quantity of work (story points). 

Code Freeze

A code freeze is a development term that means that no code can be edited or modified during the freeze period. It's designed to prevent the addition of more bugs before code goes live.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the process of two or more people, entities working together to complete a task or achieve a goal.

COP - Community of Practice 

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals.

Context Switching

Context Switching is the process of stopping work in one project and picking it back up after performing a different task on a different project.

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous integration is an Agile practice where developers constantly add their code to the main system. 

Continuous Deployment (CD)

Continuous deployment aims to reduce the time elapsed between writing a line of code and making that code available to users in a production environment.

Daily Scrum

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team.

Definition of Done

The definition of done is an agreed upon list of the activities deemed necessary to get a product increment, usually represented by a user story, to a done state by the end of a sprint.

Definition of Ready

Definition of Ready involves creating clear criteria that a user story must meet before being accepted into an upcoming iteration. This is typically based on the INVEST matrix.

Deployment 

Deployment in software includes all of the steps, processes and activities that are required to make a feature/functionality available to its intended users.

Developers

A software developer engages in identifying, designing, installing and testing a software system they have built for a company from the ground up.

Development Environment

A development environment also known as Dev Environment is a workspace for developers to make changes without breaking anything in a live environment. It is also the collection of processes and tools that are used to develop the source code for a program or software product.

Epics

An epic is a large body of work or a feature that can be broken down into smaller user stories. 

Estimation

In software development, an “estimate” is the evaluation of the effort necessary to carry out a given development task; this is most often expressed in terms of duration

Environment 

The SDLC environments are defined as controlled points where developers can carry out activities related to development, testing, installation, configuration, and deployment.

Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile software development framework that aims to produce higher quality software, and higher quality of life for the development team. XP is the most specific of the agile frameworks regarding appropriate engineering practices for software development.

Facilitator

A facilitator is a person who chooses or is given the explicit role of conducting a meeting.

Feature 

A feature is a large body of work similar to an Epic

Frequent Releases

An Agile team frequently releases its product into the hands of end users, listening to feedback, whether critical or appreciative.

Front end developer

Front-end web developer is an engineer who can handle the practice of producing HTML, CSS and JavaScript for a website or Web Application so that a user can see and interact with them directly.

Full Stack Developer

A full stack developer is an engineer who can handle all the work of databases, servers, systems engineering, and clients. Depending on the project, what customers need may be a mobile stack, a Web stack, or a native application stack.

​​Functionality 

This is a set of functions or capabilities associated with computer software or hardware or an electronic device data management functionalities such as data integrity, security, recoverability.

Given When Then (Gherkin Language)

The Given-When-Then formula is a template intended to guide the writing of acceptance tests for a User Story: (Given) some context, (When) some action is carried out, (Then) a particular set of observable consequences should obtain

Go-Live

The go-live of any product is the culmination of weeks, months and sometimes even years of groundwork, project planning, preparation, execution, monitoring and controls involving a company's internal and external stakeholders.

Go/no-go

Go/no-go decision making is a process of passing or failing a proposition.The outcome of the go/no-go decision making is to assess whether to go or not to go with a project.

Grooming

Backlog Grooming also known as refinement is the process of refining (breaking down) user stories or backlog items, breaking big items into smaller chunks. 

Hotfix

A hotfix or quick-fix is a single, cumulative package that includes information that is used to address a problem in a software product. Hotfixes can also solve many of the same issues as a patch, but it is applied to a “hot” system—a live system—to fix an issue: Immediately, without creating system downtimes or outages.

Impediment

It’s an obstacle that reduces an Agile team’s productivity or prevents them from meeting their goals & objectives.

Incremental Development

In an Agile context, Incremental Development is when each successive version of a product is usable, and each builds upon the previous version by adding user-visible functionality. 

Integration

“Integration” (or “integrating”) refers to any efforts still required for a project team to deliver a product suitable for release as a functional whole. 

INVEST

The acronym INVEST stands for a set of criteria used to assess the quality of a user story. If the story fails to meet one of these criteria, the team may want to reword it. 

Iteration

An iteration is a timebox during which development takes place. The  duration may vary from project to project and is usually fixed.

Iterative Development

Agile projects are iterative insofar as they intentionally allow for “repeating” software development activities, and for potentially “revisiting” the same work products (the phrase “planned rework” is sometimes used; refactoring is a good example).

Kanban

The Kanban Method is a means to design, manage and improve flow for knowledge work and allows teams to start where they are to drive evolutionary change. 

Kanban Board

A Kanban Board is a visual workflow tool consisting of multiple columns. Each column represents a different stage in the workflow process.

Lead Time

Lead Time is the time between a customer order and delivery. In software development, it can also be the time between a requirement made and its fulfillment

LOE - Level of Effort

In project management, level of effort is a support-type project activity that must be done to support other work activities or the entire project effort. It usually consists of short amounts of work that must be repeated periodically

Lower Environment

The idea is simple, you build out a smaller scale model of your production environment

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A Minimum Viable Product is the “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”

Pair Programming

Pair programming consists of two programmers sharing a single workstation (one screen, keyboard and mouse among the pair).

Patches

Patches are often temporary fixes between full releases of software packages. Patches are used to correct both large and small issues that may or may not require immediate attention, such as:Fixing a software bug, Installing new drivers

Product Backlog

It’s a wishlist of new product features, updates, bug fixes, etc. that are required by the user.At the start of every iteration, the product owner decides which backlog items the team needs to work on. After every iteration, the backlog is regularly updated with user suggestions and new features. 

Production Environment

Production environment is where the latest versions of software, products, or updates are pushed live to the intended users.This is the environment where the end user can see, experience, and interact with the new product.

Product Owner

The Product Owner (PO) is a member of the Scrum Team responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing the Team Backlog.

QA (Quality Analyst) Environment 

A QA environment is where you test your upgrade procedure against data, hardware, and software that closely simulate the Production Environment.

Refactoring

These are a systematic approach to improving the system without changing observable system behavior. Example: Improving maintainability, performance, or scalability

Release

A release is a deployable software package that is the culmination of a single or several iterations.

Release Plan

Release plan is the execution-level plan of how you'll deliver the work that you've decided to do and the timeframe when that work will be completed.

SAFe

The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is a set of organization and workflow patterns for implementing agile practices at enterprise scale.

Sandbox 

A sandbox is an isolated testing environment that enables users to run programs or execute files without affecting the application, system or platform on which they run.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is part of the Scrum Team, responsible for ensuring the team lives Scrum values and principles and follows the processes and practices that the team agreed they would use. 

Scrum of Scrums

Scrum of Scrums is a scaled agile technique that offers a way to connect multiple teams who need to work together to deliver complex solutions.

Scrumban

Scrumban is an Agile development methodology that is a hybrid of Scrum and Kanban

Spikes

Spikes are research activities to reduce risk, understand a functional need, increase estimate reliability, or define a technical approach.

Technical spikes - Researching a technical approach or Functional spikes - Researching how a user might use or interact with the system

Sprint Planning 

Sprint planning is a timeboxed working session that lasts roughly 1 hour for every week of a sprint.

Staging 

A staging environment (stage) is a nearly exact replica of a production environment for software testing. It’s also called a pre-production environment.

System Integration Testing SIT

The SIT (System Integration Testing) is intended to test the functionality of a system as a whole after integrating all the system components.

Tech Debt

Tech Debt is a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.

Testers  

Testers/quality assurance testers of software development and deployment.

Timebox 

Timeboxing allocates a fixed time period, called a timebox, within which planned activity takes place.

User Acceptance Test

UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is responsible for testing the system from the user's perspective.

User Experience

User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. 

User Interface

The user interface (UI) is the point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device. This can include display screens, keyboards, a mouse and the appearance of a desktop. It is also the way through which a user interacts with an application or a website

WIP Limit

WIP stands for work in progress, and a WIP limit is a cap on the number of tasks your team is actively working on.

Wireframe

Wireframe is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. Wireframes are created for the purpose of arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose