Appendix 1
Glossary

Agile approach Deliver small chunks of valuable finished work while collaborating with the customer (or customer surrogate). It’s important that the people who want to use agile approaches use the mindset embodied in the Agile Manifesto and the 12 principles of agile software development.

Burndown chart A chart that measures progress against time.

Burnup chart A chart that tracks how much work the team has completed to date. Product backlog burnup charts look at the entire set of features, not just a small amount of work.

Cost of delay The effect of a delay on expected revenue. What it costs you in terms of revenue every week this project is delayed. Measure that cost from the maximum revenue, not the current revenue.

Cost of delay divided by duration (CD3) A way to compare different features with different value and duration to decide what to do first.

Cumulative flow A measure of the work in progress over time.

Generalizing specialist Someone who has one skill in depth, and is flexible enough to be able to work across the team to help move a feature to “done.”

Hardening iteration If a team doesn’t meet its “done” working agreements, or the acceptance criteria was insufficient, the team might realize it needs to do more work to finish the stories before it can release.

Iteration A specific timebox. For agile projects, that time is normally one to four weeks, with many teams preferring one or two weeks.

Kanban Literally the Japanese word for “signboard.” A scheduling system for limiting the amount of work in progress at any one time.

Lean A pull approach to managing work that looks for waste in the system.

Mob When the team works as one to start and finish a feature. The WIP limit is 1 for the entire team. The team works off a single keyboard and monitor.

Pairing When two people work together on one piece of work.

Product owner The person who is responsible for creating and ranking the backlog for a team.

Program A collection of projects that, when released, together deliver significant business value.

Project A unique undertaking that involves risk and ends.

Roadmap A list, either by quarter or by month, of which features the organization desires in a product.

Spike If you cannot estimate a story, timebox some amount of work (preferably with the entire team) to learn about it. Then you will be able to know what to do after that short timebox.

Sprint An iteration in Scrum.

Swarming When the team collaborates to start and complete a feature. The team has a WIP limit of 1. People might work separately or together, but not all as one team, as in mobbing.

Timebox A specific amount of time in which a person will attempt to accomplish a specific task.

User story A requirement in the form of value to a specific user of the product.

Waste Work in progress, work that is started and not yet done.

WIP, work in progress Any work that is not complete. When you think in lean terms, it is waste in the system. Note that you do not get “credit” for partially completed work in agile.