Agile FAQs
What is agile?
Agile is a time-boxed and iterative approach to product development. Originating from the software industry, agile is now used in many industries that need fast, on-time delivery. Agile is an umbrella term for many development methods, tools, and techniques. These take their inspiration from the Agile Manifesto.
What is Scrum?
Scrum is an agile method that enables self-organizing teams to develop complex products. It is a method that promotes effective team collaboration. It productively and efficiently allows development teams to deliver high-quality products. It is suitable for projects where the requirements are unknown. Like all agile methods, Scrum follows the 12 agile principles from the Agile Manifesto.
What is a scrum master?
A scrum master acts as a facilitator between the product owner and the development team. The scrum master facilitates and supports a self-organizing team by removing impediments to the work. Scrum masters ensure close collaboration between the development team and the product owner.
What are agile methodologies?
Agile methodologies are those that follow the four core agile values and the 12 agile principles from the Agile Manifesto. These methodologies encourage individual and team interactions over processes and tools. They involve working products over comprehensive documentation. Agile methodologies also focus on customer collaboration over contract negotiation. They serve as guides in responding to change rather than following a plan.
What is agile project management?
Agile project management is an interactive approach. It involves the planning and controlling of project processes in delivering high-quality products. It embodies the four core values and 12 principles inspired by the Agile Manifesto. It involves constant interaction between a facilitator and a self-organizing team. In every step of the single development cycle, iterations are made.
What is agile development?
Agile development is a lightweight product engineering framework. It promotes iterative development throughout a product life-cycle. It comprises of a close collaboration between the self-organizing team and its clients. It also includes the iterative and incremental delivery of products through a series of timeboxes. These enable early and frequent releases.
What is Scrum methodology?
The Scrum methodology addresses the presence of complexity and ambiguity in product development. It serves as a guide for self-organizing teams to complete their objectives through a series of sprints, lasting one to four weeks. Scrum, like all agile methods, is based upon the principles within the Agile Manifesto.
What does Scrum stand for?
Scrum is a term taken from a practice in rugby that stresses the importance of teamwork. It was used in a complex product development research paper entitled “The New Product Development Game.” It showed how self-organizing teams can achieve outstanding performance. It suggested giving self-organizing teams objectives instead of executable tasks. This is the same principle that Scrum applies today.
What is a product backlog?
A product backlog is a ‘prioritized list’ of requirements or features created by a product owner. It is the single authoritative source of objectives that a self-organizing team works on in an agile timebox. The list helps a self-organizing team to plan their work during a timebox.
What is the meaning of agile?
The technical term of agile means is being able to move quickly and easily. In the product development world, agile is a time-boxed iterative approach. It promotes fast, on-time delivery. It is a development method that divides tasks into short phases of work, known as iterations, in which there is constant interaction between the product owner and a self-organizing team.
What is extreme programming?
Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile product development approach. It aims to produce higher quality software products. It applies appropriate engineering practices for product development through the application of 5 values: communication, simplicity, feedback, courage and respect. These values inform the XP practices such as metaphors, planning games, continuous integration, and refactoring.
What best describes a Scrum team?
A scrum team consists of the product owner, a scrum master, and a self-organizing development team. The product owner represents the customer. The product owners communicate the priorities and vision to a development team. The scrum master acts as a facilitator between the product owner and the development team. A development team is a self-organized unit responsible for developing the product.
What is a Kanban board?
A Kanban board is an agile project management tool. Designed to help self-organizing teams, it visualizes their work and reduces wastage in the workflow. It establishes constant interaction for every task of a single product development cycle. Kanban boards use cards and columns. They help teams commit the right amount of work for faster product delivery.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a scheduling system tool that originated from the Toyota Production System. Introduced as a lean manufacturing tool to its production process, Toyota used the tool to reduce wastage in the workflow. Kanban has since been adopted by many agile methods. It also allows a self-organizing team to hasten the work without sacrificing productivity.
What is Kanban system?
The Kanban system is an agile scheduling tool that originated from Toyota. It was first labeled as a lean manufacturing tool for Toyota’s production process. It reduces the production processes and wastages in the workflow. The Kanban system is the most popular tool in most agile methods today. It allows the self-organizing team to efficiently achieve tasks without sacrificing productivity.
What is agile and scrum?
Agile is an umbrella term for many development methods, tools, and techniques. These took their inspiration from the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is an example of an agile development method and is the most popular agile method used today. Scrum started in the software industry. But it is now used to develop products other than software.
What is scrum master role?
The scrum master role focuses on the facilitation of constant iterative collaboration. This involves the product owner and the development team during a product development life cycle. Scrum masters remove impediments in a self-organizing team’s work. Thus, scrum masters help ensure the delivery of on-time and high-quality products.
What is the Agile Manifesto?
The Agile Manifesto consists of 4 practices and 12 principles. The practices include:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
- Working software over comprehensive documentation;
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
- Responding to change over following a plan.
These practices and principles guide the actions of agile practitioners working together on product development teams.
What is an agile coach?
An agile coach is an experienced practitioner in the implementation of agile methods, techniques and projects. Agile coaches share their relevant experience with a product development team to improve the quality of their work. An agile coach provides feedback. Agile coaches also give advice to new agile project teams and assisting self-organizing teams to perform at a higher level.
What is a scrum team?
A scrum team is a collection of individuals who work in a product development life cycle. They describe, define, improve, and deliver high-quality products. A scrum team applies the four core values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. It consists of the product owner, scrum master, and a self-organizing development team.
What is an agile environment?
An agile environment is a company or organization that creates agile product development life cycles. It and applies the four core values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto to them. Having an agile environment means developing a company culture. The culture involves the constant collaboration of agile team members to improve the quality of work.
What is a Scrum meeting?
There are four types of meetings defined in scrum:
- Sprint planning– to plan the work for the coming sprint;
- Daily scrum – a short meeting of the development team to plan the daily work;
- Review – to review the product with the product owner;
- Retrospective – to understand lessons and improve the process.
What is a Certified Scrum Master?
A Certified Scrum Master (CSM) is an entry-level agile method credential. It is designed for scrum practitioners to develop their deeper understanding of the scrum method. The Scrum Alliance, one of the scrum certification body, provides the CSM certification. Scrum practitioners who have earned a CSM fill roles such as scrum master or scrum team member.
What are agile methods?
Agile refers to many development methods, tools, and techniques. They are inspired by the Agile Manifesto. Some of the most popular agile methods include:
- Scrum;
- Kanban;
- Lean Software Development;
- Extreme programming (XP);
- Crystal;
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM);
- Feature Driven Development (FDD);
- ScrumBan.
What is a sprint backlog?
A sprint backlog is a prioritized list of work items to be delivered in a sprint. Items are moved to the sprint backlog from the product backlog during a sprint planning meeting. The scrum master and development team works closely with the product owner. This helps them focus on the work which adds the most value for the customer.
What is included in the sprint backlog?
A sprint backlog consists of the product backlog that consists of the items that the development team agreed to complete in a sprint. It involves the selection of some product backlog items during the sprint planning meeting. The development team would then identify which tasks are necessary to deliver the product owner’s needs.
What does Kanban mean?
Kanban is a term given to a Japanese manufacturing system. It supplies regulated objectives with the use of instruction cards. These cards follow the agile values and principles in the delivery of products. In the product development world, Kanban is an agile scheduling system tool. It reduces wastages in the workflow without sacrificing productivity.
What is an agile team?
An agile team consists of a product owner, scrum master, and a development team. They create, iterate, and adapt to the necessary changes that improve the quality of work in the delivery of products. Agile team members focus on the product owner’s needs by ensuring high-quality product delivery. They observe the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.
What is an agile project?
An agile project is a collection of tasks created and modified to suit the product owner’s needs. It follows the four core values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. An agile project involves the maintenance of high-quality work performance. It also involves the assessment of progress and reorganization of development priorities.
What are agile principles?
There are 12 agile principles embodied in the Agile Manifesto. These act as a guide to agile practitioners to help them work in ways which conform to the four core agile values within the Manifesto. All agile methods, such as scrum, will apply these principles to enable the team to meet the four core values.
What is Scrumban?
Scrumban is an agile development methodology comprised of a hybrid of both scrum and Kanban. Self-organizing teams use Kanban boards to pull prioritized work items from the sprint backlog. They use it as a visual progress indicator. As teams improve their workflow, the velocity of items moving across the board will increase.
What is definition of done?
The definition of done (DoD) is an agile concept which is used by the development team to clarify when work is 100% finished. By defining DoD, there is greater transparency about whether a task is either done or not done. DoD is a useful barometer for measuring progress on an agile team.