Agile Glossary
My curiosity is your superpower. When clients and Scrum training attendees want a definition or more reading for an Agile topic, I invariably find it for them. This glossary is the result of countless hours of research, and has been growing and evolving for over 15 years. The intent is to connect you with trust-worthy information to help your team(s) become more effective, whether using Scrum, Kanban or some other flavour of Agile. ~ Mark
The content is created and the links are curated through the lens of Agile Pain Relief Consulting’s view of what is effective in the practice of Scrum and Agile.
A
Acceptance Criteria
Team members collaborate to create examples that demonstrate expected behaviors
Agile
Agile is a mindset not a tool for greater speed
Agile Anti-Patterns
Anti-patterns are recurring practices that create harm, in your team.
Agile Architects
Agile Architectural Patterns
Agile Architecture
Agile Architecture is about minimum amount of design upfront and maximum simplicity
Agile Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (aka BI) is the dark art of extracting knowledge from a database in
Agile Contracts
Traditional fixed price, fixed outcome contracts don't fare well in an Agile world. The
Agile Documentation
Documentation isn't an oxymoron in Agile world. It does require a different approach
Agile Engineering Practices
The basic list of modern engineering practices, Agile Teams need. Especially with AI generating bad code faster
Agile for Embedded Software
Embedded Software Development is about building software that is installed inside a device
Agile Game Development
Agile Game Development is different from classical software development, requiring larger and more broadly skilled groups
Agile Government
Agile is about adapting to changing requirements and needs. Governments, just like anyone
Agile Hardware
Agile Hardware Development faces uniques challenges that software teams don't
Agile Mainframe Development
Agile Outside of Software
Agile isn't just for software! Discover how Agile approaches and Scrum are used in sales, marketing, HR, construction, and ...
Agile Sales and Marketing
Sales and Marketing are challenged in the same way that software development was over
Agile Schools
Agile Schools adapts Scrum for education, fostering self-organization and teamwork.
Agile/Lean UX
Discover why traditional contracts don't work. Move beyond fixed-price, fixed-outcome agreements
Appreciative Inquiry
Tired of problem-focused change? Appreciative Inquiry focuses on strengths and positive aspects
Approval Tests
ARC Motivational Model
The ARC motivation model explains motivation through Autonomy, Relatedness, & Competence. Learn how these elements impact intrinsic motivation at work'
B
Behaviour Driven Development [BDD]
Behaviour Driven Development (BDD): Teams collaborate to describe user story behaviors with examples. They improve quality through shared understanding.
Blame Chet
Blame erodes team safety and productivity. Chet Hendrickson had the wisdom to show us in the early Agile days
Bottlenecks
A visual representation of problem that helps understand cause and effect. Ideal for team collaboration to develop a common understanding and find leverage points.
Business Analyst in Scrum
The traditional Business Analyst role transforms in Scrum teams, from documenting requirements to ensuring the right problem is solved and quality is raised.
C
Case Studies
Causal Loop Diagram
A Causal Loop Diagram is a visual representation and reference that helps to
Coaching
Agile Coaching's evolving definition and the tension between being agenda-less and promoting Agile improvement. Includes resources focusing on tools for coaches' journeys
Code Reviews
Code review is the process of inspecting or editing code, looking for errors. We explore whether the practice is worthwhile, since your brain wasn't designed to read hundreds of lines of code in a single sitting.
Code Smells
Code smells is the term used for warning signs or hints that there might be something wrong in your codebase. More important than ever in the era of AI-assisted coding.
Collective Code Ownership
Collective Code Ownership is the premise that the whole team owns the code.
Colocation
Colocation is when team members are in the same physical location so in-person
Community of Practice
A Community of Practice connects people with shared interests across teams, providing mutual support and knowledge sharing. They break silos,
Complexity and the Cynefin Framework
We encounter complexity whenever we're asked to estimate how long it will take to fix a
Continuous Delivery and Deployment
Continuous Delivery explained: the practice of frequent, automated deployments that reduce risk and shorten feedback cycles.
Continuous Integration [CI]
In software development, Continuous Integration is the practice of committing code back to main several times a day.
Core Protocols
A framework for better team health. Includes core commitments focused on psychological safety and team-first thinking.
Cross-Functional Teams
In the Agile world a cross-functional team is one that has all the skills it requires
Cross-Skilling
Cross-skilling is where a team member decides (without being pushed) to learn a new
Cumulative Flow Diagram [CFD]
A Cumulative Flow Diagram is a visual summary of the information contained on the
Cycle Time
Cycle Time is the time it takes from the moment a team starts work on an item, until it is done or ideally delivered
D
Daily Scrum
The Daily Scrum is the daily meeting where the Scrum Team get ready to collaborate for
Decision Making Tools
Agile Teams need to make small decisions frequently. Widen your toolchain
Definition of Done
Definition of Done is the official checklist that Scrum Teams maintain of the
Definition of Ready
Definition of Ready is an agreement between the Product Owner and the team that
Dependencies
Developers
If you thought that ScrumMaster was a poorly named role in Scrum, check out
DevOps
DevOps (also now DevSecOps) is the practice of Development working more closely with
Distributed Teams
Diversity
Diversity in Agile helps reduce the risk of problems created through cognitive and
Dot Voting
Dot voting is a mechanism to help an Agile team select a single item from many or
E
Effective Teams
Calling a group of individuals a "team" is only a label, unless they're organized and
Empathy Map
Empathy Maps are a tool to help us record what we understand about our audience. The
Ensemble (formerly Mob) Programming
Ensemble Programming (formerly known as Mob Programming) is the logical extension
Estimation
An estimate is a qualified guess to help people make a decision about doing work. In
Extreme Programming
F
Facilitation
Facilitation is the art of helping a group of people reach agreement or understanding,
Failure Demand
Failure demand is demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right
Failure Modes
Fake Agile
Agile's success is also its Achilles heel. Everyone wants to do Agile, but not
Feature Factory
Are you working in a Feature Factory? Shipping code without any sense that your work solves customer problems?
Feedback
Forecasting
Forecasting in the Agile world asks the difficult questions: How much of our product
I
Impact Mapping
Impact Mapping is a tool to help teams focus their work on the feature by identifying
Impediments
In the context of a Scrum team, anything that slows the team’s progress towards
Improvement Experiments
Agile teams attempt to use Retrospectives as a tool for Team Improvement. Yet our
Interruptions
Team members get interrupted throughout their working day. Some of the interruptions are
INVEST
User Story Splitting is the art of splitting User Stories or Product Backlog Items
Iterative and Incremental Development
Iterative and Incremental Development is fancy language for working in cycles and
L
Large Scale Scrum
LeSS, aka Large Scale Scrum challenges you to descale your organization before attempting Scale your organization
Lean Software Development
Lean Startup
Lean Startup is a way for a group of people with a product idea to test it with the
Lean Startup Experiments
A core concept of Lean Startup is that we need to validate aspects of your product or
Legacy Code and Systems
Legacy code is often described as code checked into the system without a unit test. A
Liberating Structures
Liberating Structures are tools that create balance in self-organization, which is at
M
Metrics and Measurement
Metrics are the tools we use (and misuse) to help us understand how we're evolving.
Minimum Viable Product [MVP]
MVP Is not Minimum Crappy Feature. It is a learning tool
Morale
Team health checks have been popular in the Agile Community for years. Getting people to
Motivation
Traditional often assume that carrot and stick is an effective motivational model
Multitasking
Buried in most job ads is the phrase "Looking for a great multitasker". Too bad they don't
N
O
P
Pair Programming
Pair Programming is when two people write code together on one machine. This
Part-time Team Members
People should be dedicated to one and only one team. The science of team work shows this
Persona
Discover how Personas a fictional character created to represent a group of users of a product, help teams build better products
Personal README
Github style READMEs can be turned to personal use. A Personal README, aka Personal
Portfolio Management
Agile Portfolio Management is a tool for a group of teams that have too many major
Prioritization
Product Backlog
The Product Backlog is an ordered list of all the work items or value the Product
Product Backlog Refinement
Product Backlog Refinement (formerly known as "Product Backlog Grooming") is a session
Product Owner Role
The Product Owner owns the product that the team is building. The Product Owner is
Production Support
When a team has a product that is live in the field, they need a pattern to handle the
Project vs. Product
Project Focused Mindset breaks agile. It harms resilience and damages productivity.
Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is about being part of a team and knowing that you can share
Pull Requests
Pull Requests are a proposal to merge a set of changes from one branch to another. They
R
Refactoring
Refactoring is the process of restructuring existing code without changing its
Resource Utilization Trap
In many organizations, the people who do the work are treated like economic resources
Roadmaps and Strategy
In traditional approaches, a Roadmap is a list of dates and promises that are being
S
Safety Check
A team safety check is a way of understanding the team’s readiness to be open and
Scaled Agile Framework
Scaled Agile Framework, aka SAFe, is probably the least Agile approach to getting many
Scaling and Large Teams
When attempting to get many teams to work effectively together in an Agile world, we need
SCARF Model
Carrot and Stick doesn't work. Take the time to understand what does motivate people and you can build a better team.
Scrum
Scrum is an approach to applying the Agile mindset. Scrum is a way of organizing a
Scrum Team
The Scrum Team is all of the people needed to get the product built and into the
Scrum vs Kanban
Scrum is a tool that organizes a team to deliver value to a customer. Along the way,
ScrumMaster Anti-Patterns
An Anti-Pattern is a recurring pattern that frequently shows up, where the behaviour
ScrumMaster Role
The ScrumMaster is one of the more poorly-named aspects of Scrum. The intended meaning
Scrummerfall
Security in Scrum
How do we build Secure products in Scrum? In a world where the development team deliver
Self-Organization
A self-organizing team is one where team members make all relevant decisions on how to
Self-Selecting Teams
The default assumption when creating a new team is that the management and team leads will
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership is the act of leading through service to others. Okay, so how does
Slack
Slack in Agile isn't about laziness or the communication tool—it's critical buffer time for problem-solving and learning that prevents technical debt and team burnout
Special Teams
Sometimes organizations form Special Teams assigned to tackle technical bugs or other
Spotify Model
The "Spotify Model" is often misunderstood and misapplied in organizations. It
Sprint
A Sprint is a fixed period, ranging from one week to one month in length, during which
Sprint Backlog
Sprint Burndown
Burndown charts graph work remaining vs time. They were originally used for tracking work in the Sprint
Sprint Goal
Sprint Goal is a single product objective shared by the Scrum Team that describes the
Sprint Length
The ScrumGuide says that Sprints "are fixed length events of one month or less to create
Sprint Planning
Sprint Planning is an event at the beginning of a Sprint where the Team plans the
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint Review and Retrospective are often confused. The Sprint Review is focused on the
Sprint Review
Sprint Review is an event at the end of the Sprint where the Scrum Team review the
Stable Teams
A stable team is one in which team membership doesn’t change often and, instead, is
Story Mapping
A Story Map is a way to help visualize the flow or story of a product. Across the top
Swarming
If Pair Programming is two people working together on a single problem at the same time
Systems Thinking
Systems Thinking takes the view that any problem we're working on is part of a larger,
T
TDD vs BDD
Test Driven Development \[TDD\] and Behaviour Driven Development \[BDD\] are often
Team Formation Models
**Team Formation Models** are helpful in understanding what state a team is at, and then
Team Launch
The purpose of the team launch or liftoff is to help the team move from a group of
Team Size
The Scrum Guide offers very limited guidance, suggesting 3-9 people per team (exclusive of
Tech Debt Stories
Debt stories tend to backfire, growing more debt instead of reducing it
Technical Debt
**Technical Debt** is a deeply misunderstood term. It was originally coined at the
Test Driven Development [TDD]
Test Driven Development (TDD) is a tool that forces us to write, simplier code. It reduces defects by reducing complexity.
Testing
**Agile Testing** is "collaborative testing practices that occur continuously, from
Theory of Constraints
The **Theory of Constraints** is a system improvement tool. It illustrates how in a system
Trunk Based Development
Understand why long-lived branches add overhead for Agile teams. Discover how trunk-based development supports continuous integration and refactoring.
U
Unit Testing
**Unit Testing** is an approach to test small, isolated chunks of code that prove whether
User Story
In Scrum, a **User Story** is a tool used to provoke, and then summarize, a conversation
User Story Splitting
**User Story Splitting** is the art of splitting User Stories or Product Backlog Items
W
When to Use Scrum
Work in Progress
In Scrum, **Work in Progress** is the batch of User Stories or Product Backlog Items that
Work Week
Our modern work week of five days on and two days off is nothing more than an accident of
Working Agreements
A Working Agreement is a short set of guidelines created by the Team, for the Team,
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