UI / UX
Definition: User Interface (UI) is the series of screens, pages, and visual elements like buttons and icons that enable a person to interact with a product or service. User experience (UX), on the other hand, is the internal experience that a person has as they interact with every aspect of a company’s products and services.
○ Work Example: Your team may have work that is designated to developing an application that will have a User Interface. The User Experience will be the series
of events that occur while they are using the application.
Root cause analysis
Definition: A methodology used for analyzing problems in order to identify the main reason for that problem
○ Work Example: When a problem arises, you must ask your team members questions that will allow for exploration to resolve the problem.
Dependencies
Definition: Dependencies are the relationships between work that determine the order in which the work items (features, stories, tasks)
○ Work Example: Some user stories may have a situation that causes the inability to complete work as expected. The situation must be cleared in order to complete the original story.
DevOps
Definition: DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and a cultural philosophy that automate and integrate the processes between software development and IT
teams. It emphasizes team empowerment, cross-team communication and collaboration, and technology automation.
○ Work Example: Your Dev team will need to push the working software at the end of the sprint to a pre-production environment. They will be working alongside a DevOps team, which consist of Developers and IT operations (technical cloud environment people). The DevOps team will provide and support the environment that the Development code will be pushed to.
Cloud Environment
Definition: Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software.
○ Work Example: Your Dev team will work within an environment that they can connect to using either AWS or Azure. They will have various environments in which they work in, such as:
i. Dev (Development) - The environment that your Developers code
ii. QA (Testing) - The environment that your Testers will test the Developers’ code
iii. Pre-Prod (Pre-Production) - An environment that mimics the live stage
iv. Prod (Production) - The final environment
Latency
Definition: Latency is the delay between a user’s action and a web application’s
response to that action, often referred to in networking terms as the total round
trip time it takes for a data packet (a networking unit of measure) to travel.
○ Work Example: Developers and Testers may complain about their systems being
slow or lagging. The DevOps team should be the team that addresses the matter
to make the environment run as expected.
UAT
Definition: User acceptance testing (UAT) is the last phase of the software testing
process that verifies whether a product or software is fit for the purpose it was
built for in the first place—namely, that it:
i. Fulfills business requirements
ii. Can be used by end-users
○ During UAT, people (often from the demographic the software is designed for)
test the software to make sure it can handle required tasks in real-world
scenarios, according to specifications.
○ UAT is one of the final and most critical software project procedures that ensures
developed software is ready to be rolled out to the market.
○ UAT is also known as beta testing, application testing or end-user testing, and it’s
the final testing performed after the functional, system, and regression testing
stages are over.
○ Work Example: A UAT will be held to test the code delivered in the release. The
customer will thoroughly test before accepting the code into their production
environment.
Regression Testing
Definition: Regression testing refers to a type of software testing that is used to
verify any modification or update in a software without affecting the overall
working functionality of the said software.
○ Work Example: Your Testers will have to test the application to see if any new
code has negatively changed how an application was before. If there is a
negative impact, then the Developers have to fix the change so that the
application works as it did before.
Quality Assurance / QA
Definition: Quality Assurance (QA) is a systematic process that ensures product
and service excellence.
○ Work Example: Quality Assurance is done by both Developers and Testers. The
Developers must first create quality code, that should be free from errors and
meet business / technical requirements.
Burnup Chart
Definition: The Burnup Chart provides a visual representation of a sprint's
completed work compared with its total scope.
○ Work Example: The Burnup Chart is used mostly by the Product Owner to
determine how much work has been completed by the development team.
Burndown Chart
Definition:A burndown chart shows the amount of work that has been completed
in an epic or sprint, and the total work remaining. Burndown charts are used to
predict your team's likelihood of completing their work in the time available.
They're also great for keeping the team aware of any scope creep that occurs.
○ Work Example: Jira is able to produce a sprint report with a burndown which
shows how the team is progressing along their planned work.
Technical Debt
Definition: “Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is a concept
in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused
by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would
take longer.”
○ Work Example: The Dev team may have technical debt stories in a
backlog.These items are usually in the backlog with a lower priority. Throughout
your sprints, select these stories to work so that you can fulfill the original intent
for the User Stories.
MVP
Definition: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a fundamental concept of the Lean
Startup methodology. It is an iterative process based on continuous feedback
obtained from the early adopters. A Minimum Viable Product is the smallest thing
you can build that delivers customer value.
○ Work Example: The MVP designation is used to determine the most important
features that are needed in a software build.
Release / Build
Definition:A release is a deployable software package that is the culmination of
several iterations.
○ Work Example: At the end of the sprint, the code that the Dev team has worked
on is combined in a functional code called a release or build. Each release or
build has a unique identifier. Example, in your app store, when an app is
upgraded, you can see a release or build number, and notes that shows what has
been updated in that code.
Cycle time
Definition: Cycle time is a measure of the elapsed time when work starts on an
item (story, task, bug etc.) until it’s ready for delivery. Cycle time tells how long (in
calendar time) it takes to complete a task.
○ Work Example: A user story that is easy for developers might have a cycle time
of 3 days.
Sprint
Definition: A sprint is a short, time-boxed period when a scrum team works to
complete a set amount of work.
○ Work Example: The sprint represents the time in which sprint backlog work items
are worked on and completed. Sprints are normally 2 weeks. If you are in an
environment that practices SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) agile, there will be an
innovation sprint, which is usually 1 week long.
○ Stories may “roll over” into another sprint, and that means the story has to be
completed in the next sprint, if the dev team was unable to complete it on time.
Bug / Defect
Definition:A Bug is a defect, an error, or a flaw that requires a fix, it can be a code
change, a documentation update, configuration change, etc.
○ Work Example: A bug is an error within the code that needs to be fixed, so that
the program can work as expected.
Enabler
Definition: Enablers in agile development are technical items which support the
development of business, which plays a vital role in assisting business features.
Enablers support efficient development and delivery of future business
requirements bringing visibility to all the work necessary. They help to stabilise
the architecture, infrastructure and maintain customer needs.
○ Examples:
i. Exploration enablers – These support research, prototyping, and other
activities needed to develop an understanding of customer needs,
including the exploration of prospective Solutions and evaluating
alternatives.
ii. Architectural enablers – These are created to build the Architectural
Runway, which allows smoother and faster development.
iii. Infrastructure enablers – These are created to build, enhance, and
automate the development, testing, and deployment environments. They
facilitate faster development, higher-quality testing, and a faster
Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
iv. Compliance enablers – These facilitate managing specific compliance
activities, including Verification and Validation (V&V) / testing,
documentation and signoffs, and regulatory submissions and approvals.
Spike
Definition: A research task aimed at answering a question or gathering
information, rather than at producing working software.
○ Work Example:The Dev team may not know how to solve a particular problem,
so you can allocate a specific type of user story, spike, to allow for them to do
research. These stories are pointed high (8-20pts) because of the high degree of
uncertainty.
Backlog
Definition: A product backlog is a prioritized list of work for the development team
that is derived from the roadmap and its requirements. The most important items
are shown at the top of the product backlog so the team knows what to deliver
first.
○ Work Example: In Scrum there are 2 types of backlogs (Sprint & Product). Your
Product Owner is responsible for placing user stories into the Product backlog.
This is the main backlog. They will prioritize the items that they feel are the most
important. You will then review these stories with your Dev team and place these
items into a Sprint (sprint backlog). Those items will be designated to be worked
on within that sprint. Backlog items will include stories and bugs.
Epic
Definition: An agile epic is a body of work that can be broken down into specific
tasks (called user stories) based on the needs/requests of customers or
end-users.
○ Work Example: An epic is a way to categorize types of user stories.
Stories are assigned to an epic.
Feature
Definition: A feature describes a specific solution to a requirement and delivers
against a single or multiple stories.
○ Work Example: A website may contain a “Shopping Cart” feature. It’s sole
purpose is to perform the function per the requirement for a user to hold items in
a shopping cart.
User Story
Definition: A user story is an informal, general explanation of a software feature
written from the perspective of the end user. Its purpose is to articulate how a
software feature will provide value to the customer.
○ Work Example: User Stories are the foundation of defining work for your
development team. Each user story should be short, concise, clear, and testable.
User Stories are written based on the perspective of the user that a specific
requirement will be geared to. User Stories guide the Scrum Team to develop
and test the requirements from the Product Owner or Technical Leads. The User
Stories should be small enough to fit on a sticky note.
Requirement
Definition:A Functional Requirement (FR) is a description of the service that the
software must offer. It describes a software system or its components. A function
is nothing but inputs to the software system, its behavior, and outputs. It can be a
calculation, data manipulation, business process, user interaction, or any other
specific functionality which defines what function a system is likely to perform.
Functional Requirements in Software Engineering are also called Functional
Specification.
○ Work Example: Requirements are usually created by Business Owners, Business
Analysts, Product Owners, and Technical Architects. They are used to solidify the
business / technical need that needs to be developed.
Scrum:
Definition: Scrum is an iterative and incremental framework for project
management mainly deployed in agile software development. The scrum
methodology emphasizes functional software, the flexibility to change along with
emerging business realities, communication and collaboration.
○ Work Example: Scrum is best used on software development projects. It is a
framework that is used to facilitate all 5 scrum events and principles for a
software development team.
Agile
Definition: Agile Software Development is a lightweight software engineering
framework that promotes iterative development throughout the life-cycle of the
project, close collaboration between the development team and business side,
constant communication, and tightly-knit teams.
○ Work Example: Agile is the project methodology that is best used in projects that
have uncertain requirements. Agile solves the uncertainty of how something
should be done, by Taking an incremental approach to solving a problem.
Waterfall
Definition: The waterfall model is a sequential software development process
model that follows the following defined phases:
i. Conception
ii. Initiation
iii. Analysis
iv. Design
v. Construction
vi. Testing
vii. Production/Implementation
○ Work Example: Waterfall is the project management methodology that is best
used in projects that have predictable requirements. I.e. Building a house, there
is a set amount of steps from beginning to end to building a house. The
requirements and regulations are known upfront, and the building of a house is
done in accordance to the plan and schedule. The Waterfall method is best used
in hardware based technological projects
Legacy
Definition: Legacy code refers to an application system source code type that is
no longer supported. Legacy code can also refer to unsupported operating
systems, hardware and formats. In most cases, legacy code is converted to a
modern software language and platform. However, to retain familiar user
functionality, legacy code is sometimes carried into new environments.
○ Work Example: Legacy is used to refer to older systems or applications. Legacy
systems / applications are out of date and usually need to be updated to
accommodate current technology trends.