Scrum (development) - Terminology

Terminology

The following terminology is used in Scrum:

Scrum Team

Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Development Team

Product Owner

The person responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog by representing the interests of the stakeholders, and ensuring the value of the work the Development Team does.

ScrumMaster

The person responsible for the Scrum process, making sure it is used correctly and maximizing its benefits.

Development Team

A cross-functional group of people 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.

Release burn down chart

Sprint level progress of completed stories in the Product Backlog.

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 is commonly referred to as a story and has a specific suggested structure. The structure of a story is: "As a I want to so that " This is done so that the development team can identify the user, action and required result in a request and is a simple way of writing requests that anyone can understand. 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 independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, testable requirement ("INVEST"). Despite being independent, i.e., they have no direct dependencies with other requirements, stories may be clustered into epics when represented on a product roadmap or further down in the backlog.

Theme

A theme is a top-level objective that may span projects and products. Themes may be broken down into sub-themes, which are more likely to be product-specific. Themes can be used at both program and project level to drive strategic alignment and communicate a clear direction.

Epic

An epic is a group of related stories, mainly used in product roadmaps and the backlog for features that have not yet been analyzed enough to break down into component stories, which should be done before bringing it into a sprint so to reduce uncertainty. Epics 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. Spikes 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. Spikes are 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. Unlike sprint commitments, spikes 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

The tracer bullet is a spike with the current architecture, current technology set, current set of best practices which results in production quality code. It might just be a very narrow implementation of the functionality but is not throw away code. It is of production quality and the rest of the iterations can build on this code. The name has military origins as ammunition that makes the path of the weapon visible, allowing for corrections. Often these implementations are a 'quick shot' through all layers of an application, such as connecting a single form's input field to the back-end, to prove the layers will connect as expected.

Point Scale/Effort/Story points

Relates to an abstract point system, used to discuss the difficulty of the story, without assigning actual hours. The most common scale used is a rounded Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100), although some teams use linear scale (1,2,3,4...), powers of two (1,2,4,8...), and 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, but it's common for teams to 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

The total effort a team is capable of in a sprint. The number is derived by adding all the story points from the last sprint's stories/features. This is a 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". The definition of "done" 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. The Product Owner may do so with input from the team, ScrumMaster or management. For instance, management may wish to cancel a sprint if external circumstances negate the value of the sprint goal. 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.

Planning Poker

In the Sprint Planning Meeting, the team sits down to estimate its effort for the stories in the backlog. The Product Owner needs these estimates, so that he or she is empowered to effectively prioritize items in the backlog and, as a result, forecast releases based on the team's velocity.

ScrumBut

A ScrumBut (or Scrum But) is an exception to the "pure" Scrum methodology, where a team has changed the methodology to adapt it to their own needs.