Scrum : Terminologies

Scrum is a framework to release product (s) in small but shippable segments or that promotes development iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project / product.

It includes following terminologies :

Scrum

These are daily meetings of a fixed amount of time where folks meet face to face or through video conferencing, in case located at different geographies.

(Management perspective – to manage software development program/s)

Scrum have 2 roles :

• Pig Roles
• Chicken Roles

Sprint

• Product Backlogs (All remaining items / Priorities)
• Sprint Backlogs (Frozen Requirements)
• Develop, Test, Release shippable product
• Burn Down Chart (This includes remaining number of items left for current sprint or product backlog items)

Following are the Sprint components :

• Sprint Planning (Timeboxed for couple of hours)
• Daily Sprint as Scrum (Timeboxed for 15 minutes, irrespective of the team size.)
• Sprint Retro (Timeboxed for 04 hours)

Every team member has to answer three questions :

  1. Since yesterday, what he/she has done till today.

  2. Plans for tomorrow.

  3. Any showstopper / road blocker or issue, someone on hands to discuss.

Timeboxing

Any activity, which has to be done over a fixed amount of time, irrespective of length of activity is know as Timeboxed.

E.g. Exams are Timeboxed.

Agile terminologies in short

• Scrum Team 
• Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team

• Product Owner 
• responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog 
• Ensures the value of the work the Development Team does

• Scrum Master
• responsible for the Scrum process 
• makes sure scrum is used correctly

• Development Team
• responsible for delivering potentially shippable increments of Product at the end of every Sprint

• Sprint burn-down chart
• Daily progress for a Sprint over the sprint’s length

• Product backlog
• A prioritized list of high-level requirements

• Sprint backlog
• A prioritized list of tasks to be completed during the sprint

• Sprint
• A time period (typically 1–4 weeks) in which development occurs on a set of backlog items that the team has committed to.
  Also commonly referred to as a Time-box or iteration.

• (User) Story
• A feature that is added to the backlog
• has a specific suggested structure.
  "As a <user type> I want to <do some action> so that <desired result>"
  Example : As a wiki user, I want a tools menu on the edit screen so that I can easily apply font formatting.
• A story is an INVEST - independent, negotiable, valuable, estimatable, small, testable requirement.
• Despite being independent, stories may be clustered into epics when represented on a product roadmap or further down in the backlog.

• Theme
• A top-level objective that may span projects and products.
• may be broken down into sub-themes, which are more likely to be product-specific.

• Epic
• A group of related stories 
• mainly used in product roadmaps and the backlog for features
• can also be used at a both program and project level.

• Spike
• A time boxed period used to research a concept and/or create a simple prototype - PoC
• can either be planned to take place in between sprints or, for larger teams, a spike might be accepted as one of many sprint delivery objectives.
• often introduced before the delivery of large epics or user stories in order to secure budget, expand knowledge, and/or produce a proof of concept.
• The duration and objective(s) of a spike will be agreed between the Product Owner and Delivery Team before the start.
• may or may not deliver tangible, shippable, valuable functionality
  For example, the objective of a spike might be to successfully reach a decision on a course of action. The spike is over when the time is up, not necessarily when the objective has been delivered.

• Tracer Bullet
• A spike with current architecture, current technology set, current set of best practices.
• It might just be a very narrow implementation of the functionality but is not throw away code.
• It is of production quality and rest of the iterations can build on this code.
• Example
• Helper or utility modules that can be used in other modules

• Point Scale / Effort / Story points
• used to discuss the difficulty of the story, without assigning actual hours.
• Examples
• Rounded Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100) - Most common
• Linear scale (1,2,3,4...)
• Powers of two (1,2,4,8...)
• Clothes size (XS, S, M, L, XL)

• Tasks
• Added to the story at the beginning of a sprint and broken down into hours
• Each task should not exceed 12 hours
  Insist that a task take no more than a day to finish

• Definition of Done (DoD)
• The exit-criteria to determine whether a product backlog item is complete.
• In many cases the DoD requires that all regression tests should be successful.

• Velocity
• Total effort a team is capable of in a sprint.
• derived by adding all the story points from the last sprint's stories/features.
• Guideline for the team and assists them in understanding how many stories they can do in a sprint.

• Impediment
• Anything that prevents a team member from performing work as efficiently as possible.

• Sashimi
• A report that something is "done".
• DoD vs. Sashimi
• Definition of "done" (DoD) may vary from one Scrum team to another, but must be consistent within one team.

• Abnormal Termination
• The Product Owner can cancel a Sprint if necessary.
  It can be done using input from the team, scrum master or management.
• If a sprint is abnormally terminated, the next step is to conduct a new Sprint planning meeting, where the reason for the termination is reviewed.
• Example
• Management may wish to cancel a sprint if external circumstances negate the value of the sprint goal.

• Planning Poker
• An Estimation technique
• The Product Owner needs estimates of stories, so items can be effectively prioritized in the backlog and releases could be forecast based on the team's velocity.