Scrum/Agile Glossary

Working software over comprehensive documentation.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Responding to change over following a plan.

through early and continuous deliveryof valuable software.

Agile processes harness change forthe customer's competitive advantage.

frequently, from acouple of weeks to a couple of months, with apreference to the shorter timescale.

together daily throughout the project.

Give them the environment and support they need,and trust them to get the job done.

face-to-face conversation.

primary measure of progress.

The sponsors, developers, and users should be ableto maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

agility.

the art of maximizing the amountof work not done

self-organizing teams.

the team reflects on howto become more effective, then tunes and adjustsits behavior accordingly.

A chart which shows the amount of work which has been completed. Time is shown on the horizontal axis and work completed on the vertical axis. As time progresses and items are drawn from the backlog and completed, a plot line showing the work done may be expected to rise. The amount of work may be assessed in any of several ways such as user story points or task hours. The amount of work considered to be in-scope may also be plotted as a line; the burn-up can be expected to approach this line as work is completed.

The quality of the relationship between certain Product Backlog items which may make them worthy of consideration as a whole. See also: Sprint Goal.

Scrum Event that is a 15-minute time-boxed event held each day for the Developers. The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. At it, the Developers plan work for the next 24 hours. This optimizes team collaboration and performance by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum and forecasting upcoming Sprint work. The Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity.

Definition of Done is a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product. The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born. The Definition of Done creates transparency by providing everyone a shared understanding of what work was completed as part of the Increment. If a Product Backlog item does not meet the Definition of Done, it cannot be released or even presented at the Sprint Review.

Any member of a Scrum Team, that is committed to creating any aspect of a usable Increment each Sprint regardless of technical, functional or other specialty.

The process of the coming into existence or prominence of new facts or new knowledge of a fact, or knowledge of a fact becoming visible unexpectedly.

The philosophy that all knowledge originates in experience and observations. It’s a cornerstone of the scientific method and underlies much of modern science and medicine. In the context of Scrum, empiricism refers to the idea that solving complex problems, or doing complex work, can only be done using an exploratory process rather than relying on predetermined plans.

A shared set of development and technology standards that Developers apply to create releasable Increments of software.

The selection of items from the Product Backlog Developers deems feasible for implementation in a Sprint.

Scrum Artifact that defines the complete and valuable work produced by the Developers during a Sprint. The sum of all Increments form a product.

A Scrum Artifact that consists of an ordered list of the work to be done in order to create, maintain and sustain a product. Managed by the Product Owner.

The activity in a Sprint through which the Product Owner and the Developers add granularity to the Product Backlog.

Role in Scrum accountable for maximizing the value of a product, primarily by incrementally managing and expressing business and functional expectations for a product to the Developers.

The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against. The Product Goal is in the Product Backlog. The rest of the Product Backlog emerges to define “what†will fulfill the Product Goal.