Agile Glossary

In contrast with a fully defined process, where it is thought possible to know everything in advance, an empirical process rests on the assumption that visibility, inspection, and adaptation are necessary when doing planning in relatively small, manageable chunks, where each small piece seeks to test one or more assumptions. For instance, an individual user story is stating an assumption about what a customer will find valuable, but is not a fully defined implementation plan in and of itself. Each subsequent delivery of value results in a more fully formed picture of what the customer wants, and either proves or disproves a particular hypothesis about customer needs and desires.

A large user story, completion of which could potentially take weeks or months. Epics can be helpful as placeholders for large requirements, for instance, as part of strategic visioning and roadmapping activities. Epics are progressively elaborated and broken down into a set of smaller user stories.

A rough calculation of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something. In Scrum, it is common for teams to estimate the size of portfolio backlog items, product backlog items, and sprint backlog items. It is also important to note that also a majority of Scrum teams do some form of estimation, estimation as a practice is not part of Scrum. Furthermore, there are some Agile software development teams that do just fine without estimation.

An approach to testing software which significantly different from more traditional, scripted testing activities, and which has the following characteristics: it emphasizes the tester’s autonomy, skill and creativity, much as other Agile practices emphasize these qualities in developers; it recommends performing test-related activities (such as test design, test execution, and interpretation of results) in an interwoven manner, throughout a project, rather than in a fixed sequence and at a particular “phase”; it emphasizes the mutually supportive nature of these techniques, and the need for a plurality of testing approaches rather than a formal test plan.

A software development approach that places emphasis on technical practices that development teams use to manage the flow of task-level work during sprint execution. Like other Agile approaches, It is successful because it stresses customer satisfaction via delivery in reasonably small batches. It also places strong emphasis on teamwork, featuring approaches such as pair programming, test-first development (aka Test Driven Development), collective code ownership, and refactoring. Note that it is commonplace for "Scrum Teams" to employ many of the XP technical practices, and thus, such teams are actually following an approach that is a Scrum-XP hybrid.