Agile glossary
What is velocity? How does Scrum differ from Kanban? Explore the terms teams use when planning, delivering and reviewing their work.
- Agile
- An approach to work in which a team delivers small changes, gathers feedback and uses it to decide what to do next.
- Cycle time
- The elapsed time from starting to finishing one work item. It includes waiting, such as time spent in a code review queue.
- Daily Scrum
- Fifteen minutes each working day of the Sprint for developers to check progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt their plan.
- Definition of Done (DoD)
- Shared quality requirements that work must meet to become part of an increment. Passing an agreed set of tests is one example.
- Kanban
- A strategy for improving the flow of work. A team makes its workflow visible, agrees when to pull more work and addresses places where items accumulate.
- Planning Poker
- A technique for estimating together. Each person chooses a card independently. Everyone reveals at once and discusses the assumptions behind different estimates.
- Product Backlog
- An ordered list of work needed to improve the product. The Product Owner is accountable for its order as the team learns more about user needs.
- Scrum
- A framework for tackling complex problems. Each Sprint the team creates a usable increment and works with stakeholders to decide where the product should go next.
- Sprint
- A fixed period of work in Scrum, lasting a month or less. The next Sprint begins as soon as the previous one ends.
- Sprint Goal
- The shared objective that explains why this Sprint matters. It guides the team when it needs to change the planned work.
- Sprint Retrospective
- The team examines how it worked and identifies improvements. One change might be to involve a tester earlier in discussions about a new feature.
- Sprint Review
- A working session where the team and stakeholders examine the Sprint outcome, discuss what has changed around the product and consider what to do next.
- Story points
- Units a team uses to compare the relative size of work items. Familiar examples give the team reference points for future estimates.
- Throughput
- The number of items finished in a given period. A team that closed four requests in a week had a throughput of four requests that week.
- Timebox
- A maximum duration agreed before starting an activity. For example, after ten minutes of discussion the team sums up what it learned and decides how to proceed.
- Velocity
- The sum of estimates for work a team finishes in one iteration, usually in story points. Its own history can inform planning when its estimation scale stays consistent.
- Work in progress (WIP)
- The number of items started and still unfinished. If three items are being built and two are waiting for tests, WIP is five.
- Work item age
- The time elapsed since an unfinished item started. Watching its age makes it easier to spot work that may be stuck.