Introduction
In a modern age of speed, flexibility, change, and teamwork, efficiency, flexibility, and collaboration are key to success when developing software. Agile software development is the most popular of the modern project management methodologies in an environment where change is the only constant and customer needs are changing rapidly. For developers, new and old, having a grasp of Agile terminology is critical to a successful software development career.
Agile isn’t just another buzzword. Agile development is a set of practices that allows teams to become more responsive to change, deliver greater value faster, and communicate better with stakeholders and customers. Every developer who is interested in participating in Agile development needs to understand the words that are fundamental to it.
In this blog, I will explain the most fundamental Agile software development terms every developer should know to better collaborate with their teammates, participate in and perform Agile processes, and contribute to the success of their projects.
Agile Software Development: A Quick Overview
First things first – what is Agile software development? Agile methodology encourages iterative development, continuous feedback, and collaboration between team members and stakeholders. In contrast to more traditional development models such as Waterfall, Agile is more flexible and adaptable, allowing teams to change direction as needed.
Agile is based on the principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto, which emphasizes:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.
With this foundation, let’s dive into the key Agile terms every developer should know.
Key Agile Terms Every Developer Should Know
- Sprint
A sprint (or ‘iteration’) is one of the key elements of Agile, notably the Scrum framework. It is a time box (often one to four weeks) during which a team of developers works on completing a set of tasks or features that, at the end of the sprint, will result in a working (potentially shippable) product increment.
The team will work on a predetermined set of tasks from the sprint backlog, and no further work will be added after the sprint starts. This way, the team will stay on track and deliver tangible results by the end of each sprint.
Start of the sprint: The team meets to plan what can be done during the sprint by choosing user stories or tasks from the backlog and estimating their size.
Sprint Review: At the end of the sprint, the team discusses the completed work with stakeholders. This is a time for feedback, and the team assesses how the sprint went.
- Backlog
The backlog is a list of features, bug fixes, and tasks the team needs to complete for a project.
Agile has two types of backlogs: the product backlog and the sprint backlog.
Product Backlog: The list of all work items for the project, from features to enhancements, bug fixes, and technical debt, is called the Product Backlog. It is managed by the product owner, who is responsible for ordering the items based on business goals, market needs, or customer feedback.
Sprint Backlog: This is the set of work selected from the product backlog by the team in the sprint planning meeting for the current sprint. Sprint Backlog is made up of a set of type 3 user stories.
The backlog is fluid, so as new information comes to light, customers instill new insights, and priorities shift, the backlog will shift and respond accordingly. Teams will periodically review what’s in the backlog to ensure the most valuable work is being done.
- Scrum
Scrum is the most common Agile framework. Organizations should structure teams and their work, break it into bite-sized chunks, and iterate toward an improved product. The Scrum framework includes particular roles, events, and artifacts.
Scrum Roles: Scrum teams consist of three main roles:
Product Owner: responsible for managing the product backlog and ensuring the team delivers value to the business.
Scrum Master: Ensures the team follows Scrum practices, removes roadblocks, and facilitates meetings.
Development Team: The group of developers responsible for delivering the work during the sprint.
Scrum Events: Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Ups, Sprint Review, Retrospectives.
Scrum is very iterative, with sprints providing short development iteration; each sprint results in a working product increment.
- Kanban
Kanban is another Agile method that uses a board to visualize work and assign tasks. It focuses on continuous delivery and flow rather than fixed timeframes (e.g.e.g., Scrum’s sprints).
Kanban Board: This displays tasks on a visual board (sometimes called a Kanban board) where your workflow has been broken down into columns, like the ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’, and ‘Done’ columns. You can see progress and move completed work off the board.
WIP Limits: Kanban allows you to set WIP (work in progress) limits so that your team isn’t juggling more than a certain number of things at any given time. This keeps you from getting stuck in a bottleneck and prevents you from taking on new work until the current tasks are completed.
Kanban is often used by teams that want to avoid the strict constraints of sprints and instead enable greater flexibility. This makes it well-suited to teams with frequently changing priorities. It allows work to flow through the process continuously.
- User Stories
A user story is a short, human-sounding description of a feature or functionality from the perspective of an end user. It is written as if the user is telling the developer about the feature and why it is valuable to the user.
User stories typically follow this format:
“As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason].”
For example: ‘As a shopper, I want to add items to a wish list to purchase them later.’ This format keeps the customer at the center of attention and encourages developers to rank features by customer value.
User stories go on the backlog and get broken down into smaller stories during the sprint planning.
- Velocity
Velocity measures the amount of work a team can do in a single sprint. It is arrived at by estimating the number of story points or other tasks completed in previous sprints.
This allows teams to track their velocity over time and understand how much work they can do in a sprint. This helps them track their capacity and predict when the remaining work can be done. Velocity is a good measure of a team’s capacity, but it’s not a good target. A team’s velocity can vary from sprint to sprint, so the number should be used as a guide rather than a hard target.
- Daily Stand-Up
The daily stand-up is a 15-minute (maximum) meeting held each day of the sprint. It allows team members to quickly update members on their progress, highlight any impediments that may be in the way, and synchronize what will be worked on next.
During the stand-up, team members typically answer three questions:
What did I do yesterday?
What will I do today?
Are there any blockers preventing me from making progress?
The stand-up is there to enable conversation and keep the team honest.
- Burndown Chart
A burndown chart tracks a sprint’s progress against time. As tasks are completed, a line on the chart ‘burns down’ toward zero, indicating the sprint’s remaining work.
Burndown charts help monitor the sprint’s work and whether the team is on track to finish. If the team is falling behind, the burndown chart will show a slowing rate of progress, indicating a need for refocusing or adjustment.
- Definition of Done (DoD)
The Definition of Done (DoD) is a shared understanding between the team and the stakeholders about completing a task or feature. It helps everyone understand what it means to complete something and what quality standards need to be met.
For example, a task may be considered “done” only if:
The code has been reviewed and approved.
Automated tests have been written and passed.
The feature has been documented.
The functionality has been deployed to production.
The DoD helps prevent incomplete or low-quality work from being considered done and helps teams deliver consistently good work.
- Retrospective
A sprint retrospective is a meeting at the end of each sprint to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and what we can do better in the next sprint. By looking back, we can learn and improve.
Common techniques used in retrospectives include:
Start-Stop-Continue: Identifying things the team should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing.
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For (4Ls): Retrospective exercise where team members share what they liked, learned, felt lacked, or longed for during the sprint.
Retrospectives are a chance for the team to give each other feedback about how to continue working well together and to fine-tune their processes.
- Epic
An epic is a very large user story that can be cut down into smaller user stories. Epics provides a bucket for large features or initiatives spanning multiple sprints.
For instance, ‘Write a user authentication system’ might be a containing task. At the same time, ‘Implement user registration’ and ‘Set up password recovery’ are tasks nested within it.
Epics are intended to allow teams to manage large, involved projects by breaking them down into smaller, manageable chunks.
- Story Points
Story points are the way Agile teams size their tasks or user stories. Estimation in this context means understanding the relative complexity, risk, and effort of completing a user story. Instead of estimating in hours, Agile teams estimate in story points.
Story points are associated with a scale (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 5, 8) used in sprint planning to help the team determine how much work it can take. Estimating story points allows teams to avoid making time estimates and instead focus on difficulty.
- Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers regularly merge code changes into a shared repository. In turn, automated tests and builds are run each time new code is to be integrated.
CI speeds up the discovery of problems, reduces the risk of integration, and keeps the software working and deployable at all times. It also fosters collaboration, as developers must integrate their changes frequently, not just at the end of the sprint, project, or ever.
- MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the most basic form of the product that can be released to test assumptions or provide customers with a way to experience the product. The MVP will have as few features as possible to test its viability and then use that feedback to validate the product. Once you get feedback, iterate the product and make improvements.
MVPs are important in the Agile context because teams can release working software early and frequently rather than waiting until they have something perfect. If teams focus only on the features that are most critical to providing value for users, they can release what they have quickly (before the competition) and then iterate based on real-world feedback.
- Agile Coach
An Agile coach helps teams adopt and evolve Agile practices. They share Agile principles with teams and train and mentor them on using Agile practices effectively.
Like a Scrum Master, an Agile coach might work with one or several Scrum teams. However, a coach could also work across an organization to foster a culture of continuous improvement and help teams overcome problems or obstacles that arise during the transition to Agile.
Conclusion
The mindset of Agile software development helps developers work together in new ways and understand that iterative processes can lead to better results. Knowledge of Agile software development terms such as sprints, backlogs, user stories, and retrospectives also allows developers to engage more fully with Agile processes.
From a beginner Agile software developer to an experienced Agile professional, learning these terms will help you better understand the nuances of modern software development. Suppose you can speak the language of Agile and understand how its concepts work together. In that case, you can create software that users and stakeholders can rely on and adapt to their changing requirements.
References
Check out this from geeksforgeeks:
Agile Software Development – Software Engineering
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