Agile terminology
Agile terminology
– Caves and common
– Governance
– Intrinsic quality
– Product knowledge
– Reflection or retrospective
– Refactoring
– Code refactoring
– Standards
– Technical debt
– Vertical-market software
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.]
Standards
– 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.]
Technical debt
Technical debt is not an XP practice. Technical debt is total sum of less than perfect design and implementation decisions in the product, technical debt needs to be monitored and controlled.
Sit together (XP advocates an open space big enough for the whole team).
Slack (XP recommends that in any plan it is better to include some minor tasks that can be dropped if you get behind. You can always add more stories later and deliver more than you promised.).
Energized (work only as many hours as you can be productive and only as many hours as you can sustain).
Technical debt is the total amount of less-than-perfect Design and implementation decisions in your project Team should strive to have minimum technical debts, and team should reduce technical debt by adapting refactoring practice of XP.
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.]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.