Acceptance Testing

See User Acceptance Testing.

Active (Kanban)

State: Tasks that are actively being worked on by a Team Member.

Actual Hours

The total effort to Complete a Task, or Requirement, as measured when complete.

Agile

A generic term that describes over 50, sometimes conflicting, methods and frameworks for working in an adaptable, Customer focused, and Incremental way.

Agile Business Management

A series of concepts and processes for the day-to-day management of your organisation, regardless of industry, size, or location. The end goal is to improve quality, business adaptability, staff engagement, and risk management, for the benefit of your Customers.

Agile Manager

A corporate leader who embodies the principles and values of Agile.

Assignee

The Team Member responsible for delivering a Task or Requirement.

Automated Quality Control Test

A Quality Control Test that can be run, regularly, without human interaction.

Automated Unit Test

See Automated Quality Control Test.

Backlog

See Requirements Backlog.

BAU

See Business-as-usual.

Blocked (Kanban)

State: Tasks that have upstream, or downstream, dependencies, external to the Team, that are preventing progress.

Burndown Chart

A visualisation of the total effort, and effort remaining, against time.

Burnup Chart

A visualisation of the total effort, and effort remaining in the Requirements Backlog, against time.

Business Area

See Department.

Business Function

See Department.

Business Team

See Department.

Business Unit

See Department.

Business-as-usual

The standard, ongoing, work, undertaken by a Business Team.

Card (Kanban)

A visualisation of a Task (or Requirement).

Card Wall

See Kanban Board.

Centres of Excellence

A shared internal Team that provides governance, and support, on specific technologies, processes, and business areas.

Committed Parties

Stakeholders, and Team Members, who are actively working towards delivering Requirements for the Customer.

Competency Centres

See Centres of Excellence.

Complete

See Done.

Consumer

An individual or organisation that purchases products, or services, from you, but does not have any authority, or responsibility, in the design, and development, of the product/service.

Continuous Delivery

Planning and delivering related, or unrelated, Requirements, as they are identified and prioritised.

Continuous Improvement

See Kaizen.

Control Limit

The bounds of expected variance within the Team’s processes. Processes that exceed this control limit can be said to be uncontrolled.

Cross-Functional

Where individuals with different, and complementary, skills work together as a Team.

Cumulative Flow Diagram

A visualisation of the elapsed time, and number of Tasks, or Requirements, remaining in each state, against time.

Customer

An individual (or organisation) who engages one or more Teams, to deliver a series of Requirements, and who has the responsibility, and authority, to direct the delivery of the products or services.

Customer Representative

An individual delegated with the authority to act on behalf of the Customer.

Customer Requirement

See Requirement.

Cycle Time

The time taken between starting, and completing, work on a Requirement.

Cycle Time Run Chart

A visualisation of the Cycle Time (or Lead Time), compared with the average Cycle Time and bounded by the expected tolerances.

Daily Scrum

See Daily Stand-up.

Daily Stand-up

A daily, 15 minute, Team meeting, to discuss progress, plans and issues.

Defect

A shortcoming, imperfection, or lack, in an otherwise completed Requirement.

Deliverable

The product, or service, created by the Team (or Teams), to fulfil a specific Requirement. Each Deliverable generally only fulfils a single Requirement, so a large project may consist of many Deliverables.

Delivery Teams

An internal Department responsible for building core products, and/or, delivering core services. Due to the highly variable range of responsibilities for Production and Operations Teams between organisations, Agile Business Management simplifies this by calling them all ‘Delivery Teams’.

Department

A specific group within your organisation, responsible for a specific business function, subject area, service, or product. Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, and Sales and Marketing, are all examples of Departments. Departments may also be known as Groups, Divisions, Organisation Units, or Business Areas.

Do

The process of actively working on the Requirements.

Done (Kanban)

State: Tasks that are complete, and ready to be delivered to the Customer.

Driver (TDD)

Pair Work: Responsible for doing the work, be that writing, developing, building, etc.

Effort

Only the specific time required to complete a Task or Requirement, excluding any overhead.

Estimate

The process of calculating the effort required to deliver a Requirement.

Expedite (Kanban)

A high-priority track for urgent Requirements and Tasks.

Extreme Programming

An Agile software engineering framework.

Feature Driven Development

An Agile design and development framework, supporting the planning, design, and building of large-scale projects.

Finance and Accounting

An internal department responsible for managing all the financial and monetary aspects of the business.

Governance

Consistent management, cohesive policies, guidance, processes and decision-rights, for a given area of responsibility.

HR

See Human Resources.

Human Resources

An internal department responsible for staff recruitment and management policies.

ICT Support

An internal department responsible for the day-to-day administration of IT assets.

In Progress (Kanban)

A sub-state, within Kanban, for Tasks that are currently being worked on by any member of the Team.

Incremental Delivery

Planning, and delivering, related Requirements in short, fixed-time blocks.

Involved Parties

Stakeholders who have an interest in the outcome, but are not responsible for day-to-day delivery.

Issue

An issue is an event, change, or risk, that has occurred, or is occurring.

Iteration

A repeating timebox of fixed duration, allocated to the delivery of one or more Requirements, from a larger piece of work.

Iteration Backlog

An ordered list of Tasks to be delivered during an Iteration.

Iteration Burndown Chart

See Burndown Chart.

Iteration Retrospective

See Retrospective.

Iteration Velocity

See Velocity.

JIT

See Just-In-Time.

Just-In-Time

A production strategy that strives to improve a business return on investment, by reducing waiting inventory, and associated carrying costs.

Kaizen

A philosophy, culture and technique of driving continuous improvement in work processes and business functions.

Kanban Board

A tool to visualise, and control, the workflow of Tasks and Requirements.

Kanban Card

See Card.

Key Performance Indicator

A performance measurement to evaluate the success of a particular activity.

KPI

See Key Performance Indicator.

Lead Time

The time taken between adding a Requirement to the Requirements Backlog, and releasing it to the Customer.

Lead Time Run Chart

See Cycle Time Run Chart.

Lower Control Limit

See Control Limit.

Media and Communications

An internal department responsible for interacting with the public, media press releases, brand awareness, and occasionally, social media.

Minimal Marketable Feature

See Requirement.

Not Done

Requirements that are incomplete at the end of an Iteration.

Observer (TDD)

Pair Work: Responsible for advising, and reviewing, the work.

Organisation Unit

See Department.

Outcome

See Requirement.

Pair Programming (XP)

See Pair Work.

Pair Work

A technique in which each Team Member works as part of a pair, at a single workstation, as either a ‘Driver’ or ‘Observer’.

Planning

The process of determining the target scope of delivery, and (if appropriate) defining the Iteration Backlog.

Planning Poker

An estimation game that promotes collaboration and consensus building during the estimation process.

Product Backlog (Scrum)

See Requirements Backlog.

Product Owner (Scrum)

See Customer Representative.

Production and Operations

See Delivery Teams.

Project

See Requirement.

QA

See Quality Assurance.

Quality Assurance

The process of improving development and test processes, to increase overall quality, and reduce defects.

Quality Control

The act of identifying defects by testing, validating, and verifying a completed product, or service, against the Customers’ Requirements.

Quality Control Test

A formal procedure that identifies potential defects by examining the specific output of a Deliverable.

R&D

See Research and Development.

Ready (Kanban)

A sub-state within Kanban, for Tasks that are waiting to move to the next state.

Release

The process of delivering completed Requirements to the Customer.

Release Burnup Chart

See Burnup Chart.

Requirement

Also called a User Story, or Minimal Marketable Feature, a Requirement is a specific, documented, and Deliverable, Customer need.

Requirements Backlog

An ordered list of Requirements; maintained by the Customer, and estimated by the Team.

Research and Development

An internal department responsible for improving existing products and services, as well as creating new ones.

Retrospective

A regular Team meeting to review, and reflect on, the management processes that support the day-to-day operation.

Review

The (formal or informal) process of verifying that the completed Requirement meets the Customer’s expectations, and accepting them for Release.

Risk

A risk is something (generally negative) that could happen, and is assessed in terms of likelihood and potential impact.

Risk Register

A log of all risks for a specific Team and Customer.

Sales and Marketing

An internal Department responsible for the promotion, pricing, market research, and the sale of your products and services.

Scrum

An Agile project and product management framework (www.scrum.org).

Scrum Master (Scrum)

See Team Facilitator.

Scrum of Scrums (Scrum)

See Summary Stand-up.

Self-Organising

The responsibility of the Team to create a functional, internal Team structure, by replacing, and reorganising, Team Members as needed.

Sign-off

The formal approval that a Requirement has been completed to the Customer’s satisfaction.

Sprint (Scrum)

See Iteration.

Sprint Backlog (Scrum)

See Iteration Backlog.

Sprint

Retrospective (Scrum)

See Retrospective.

Sprint Velocity (Scrum)

See Velocity.

Staff Overhead

Any time used by a staff member during working hours, not in the delivery of Tasks or Requirements. Overhead includes; breaks, meetings, illness, and assisting other Team Members.

Story

See Requirement.

Story Point

An arbitrary number intended to represent all of the effort required for the whole Team to complete a single Requirement, relative to a reference Requirement.

Summary Stand-up

A Daily Stand-up consisting of representatives from each of the Teams, with a Department or project.

Task

A discrete activity that forms a subset of a Requirement. Put another way, the delivery of each Requirement requires the delivery of one or more Tasks.

TDD

See Test-Driven Work.

TDW

See Test-Driven Work.

Team

A small group of between five and nine staff, containing a cross-section of skills, permanently, or temporarily, grouped together to deliver one or more Customer’s Requirements.

Team Facilitator

The person responsible for managing the Agile process within a Team. The Team Facilitator can be a Team leader or Team Member.

Technical Debt

Technical ‘Requirements’ in the Requirements Backlog that are not directly requests from the Customers, but are needed to improve overall quality of the product or service.

Test

See Quality Control Test.

Test-Driven Development

An Agile quality management process. Also, see Test-Driven Work.

Test-Driven Work

The act of writing Quality Control Tests prior to beginning any work, rather than after.

Testing (Kanban)

State: Tasks that are functionally Done, but undergoing formal validation to verify the Task was completed successfully.

Timebox

A fixed period of time allocated to an activity, or specific event.

Unit Test

See Automated Quality Control Test.

Upper Control Limit

See Control Limit.

User Acceptance Testing

A series of quality assurance tests undertaken by the Customer, to ensure that the Deliverable meets their Requirements and expectations.

User Story

See Requirement.

Velocity

The rate of delivery of Requirements per Iteration, or other fixed period.

Vision

A brief description of the expected end state after the Team completes all the Customer Requirements. This will change as the Customer Requirements change.

WIP Limit (Kanban)

See Work In Progress.

Work

The sum of Requirements made by a single Customer to a Team, or related group of Teams, and delivered in an Incremental, or Continuous, manner.

Work In Progress Limit (Kanban)

A limit on a Kanban column (or state) to identify, and control, bottlenecks and process limitations.

Work Package

See Requirement.