Agile terminology (1)

avril 20, 2018

Agile Terminology

Caves and common

The XP phrase ‘caves and common’ refers to the creation of two zones for team members.

The common area is a public space where osmotic communication and collaboration are largely at play.

The caves is a private space is reserved for private tasks that require an isolated and quiet environment.

For the common area to work well, each team member should be working on one and the same project. [Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game – 2nd Edition. Alistair Cockburn.]

Governance

Highsmith defines agile project governance as « making decisions in an uncertain environment. » [Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products – 2nd Edition. Jim Highsmith.]

Intrinsic quality

“Higher the technical debt means lower the intrinsic quality.”

Intrinsic quality is an internal quality of the product, having good design and implementation improves the intrinsic quality and reduces the technical debts.
Intrinsic quality is required to deliver continuous value to the customer, it’s an internal quality of product which is not visible to the end user but needed to make product adaptable for future need.

Product knowledge

Cohn’s definition of product knowledge is knowledge about what features will or will not be developed in a project. [User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development. Mike Cohn.]

Reflection or retrospective

During reflection or retrospectives, an agile team reserves time to reflect on the work it has completed with the objective of continuous improvement. In these self-assessment/team-assessment events, topics can include: lessons learned from successes and failures; team standards that worked, failed, or were not properly followed; and other areas of improvement. [Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber.]

Refactoring

A change that is made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior is referred to as Code refactoring .
Code refactoring is method of improving working source code to make it more efficient, readable, extensible, maintainable and less complex. Through refactoring one is able to restructure source code modifying internal code without changing the external behavior. [Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber.]

Aspirational standards

Aspirational standards are standards that every professional should strive to uphold, but are not compulsory. [PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Project Management Institute.]

Mandatory standards

Mandatory standards are required and often backed by law. [PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Project Management Institute.]

Vertical-market software

Vertical-market software includes solutions for many organizations within one industry (e.g., pharmaceutical software). Horizontal-market software includes solutions for many organizations in many industries (e.g., word processing software). [The Art of Agile Development. James Shore.]

PDCA

PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.

PDCA was made popular by Dr W. Edwards Deming, who is considered by many to be the father of modern quality control.

Kaizen

The Japanese word « kaizen » means change for the better. [Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility. Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott.]
The word kaizen means “continuous improvement.” It is a system of continuous improvement in quality, technology, processes, company culture, productivity, safety, and leadership. It comes from the Japanese words (“kai”) which means “change” or “to correct” and (“zen”) which means “good.”

Continuous improvement

Agile project management places strong emphasis on ‘continuous improvement.’ Continuous improvement processes are built into the agile methodology, from customers providing feedback after each iteration to the team reserving time to reflect on its performance through retrospectives after each iteration. Ongoing unit and integration testing and keeping up with technological/industry developments also play a part in the continuous improvement process. Continuous improvement is also a key principle in the lean methodology, where a focus of removing waste from the value stream is held. [The Art of Agile Development. James Shore.]

Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge is the « sum of all knowledge from all people on a project team. » [Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game – 2nd Edition. Alistair Cockburn.]

Business case development

Business case development is an important initial step in agile project management. The business case is a concise document that outlines the project’s vision, goals, strategies for achieving goals, milestones, required investment and expected return/payback. A business case articulates the why and how a project will deliver value to a customer. [Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility. Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott.]

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