Understanding Agile Environment and the Terminologies used in Agile
Agile is a process or a framework where a small team develops and tests customer requirement assigned to them in their order of priorities to be accomplished in the small interval in agreement with client representative from the team.
Understanding Agile Environment
The below points will help us in understanding the Agile Environment in a better way:
1. While working in an agile environment, a team develops as well as tests a small portion of deliverable requirements in regular intervals and builds the requirement in an incremental manner, in accordance with clients.
2. In order to produce software in competitive business scenarios, the team is agile i.e. accepts the change requests and last-minute amendments in requirements by the clients are also included and are delivered in next release due in two to four weeks interval.
3. Software development using an agile framework gives special importance to individual ideas and team views or suggestions rather than following a process.
4. Working software has more value than detailed information on the functionality of the software.
5. Working together with the customer is more important than discussions and negotiations over contract terms to reach the final agreement.
6. Priority is given to responding to change requests than follow the plan.
7. An advantage in developing a requirement in an agile environment can accommodate last moment changes to the user stories (requirement divided as per priorities), deliver the requirement quickly in a regular intervals in increments as per priorities set by business team, develop and test simultaneously user requirement producing desired software solutions.
8. In order to successfully deliver software in an agile framework, customer satisfaction has priority, with delivering small chunks of requirements at regular intervals frequently by rectifying the defects found in previous releases and testing regression suites making sure than already fixed defects are not re-occurred again.
9. Customer and development team should work together on a daily basis. Accept and accommodate last moment changes in the software requirement even at later stages of development in order to win favors from the customer. Provide a good working environment and all support to keep the development team motivated in order to deliver the best solutions to the client at regular intervals.
10. Continuously learning newer technologies and tools to the development and testing teams so that they are ready to cater to newer challenges and deliver the best solutions. Retrospect the processes, analyzing them, and learning from past experiences to offer excellent solutions to the clients.
11. The agile methodologies widely in use, share common philosophy for agile framework but have their unique terminologies are Scrum, Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature-driven development (FDD), Extreme Programming (XP), Lean Software Development, and Kanban.
Terminologies used in Agile Environment
The below terminologies are widely used in Agile Environment and understanding them in detail is necessary:
Scrum
Agile scrum is basically a small group of team comprises of scrum master, that sets up team, arrange sprint meeting and remove impediments to progress.
Product owner that creates product backlog (features pending to the requirement), keeps track of backlog priorities, responsible to deliver functionalities in every iteration, Scrum team member completes their respective assigned tasks to develop or test the functionality of the deliverables.
The team meets daily for about 15 to 30 minutes to discuss, what is done, what backlog being worked upon, and any difficulties in going ahead. Scrum master takes note of the impediments and tries to remove them so that team can able to complete their tasks.
Sprint
Sprint is an interval of one month or less, in which user stories which are assigned to agile team members to design and test product requirement increments.
These intervals are spread across an entire project interval and software development life cycle.
New sprint interval starts after completing the previous sprint.
During the sprint, utmost care is taken that changes in product features should not reduce the quality of the previous sprint deliverable.
The risks encountered during sprint intervals spanning one calendar month, based on changes in requirements and complexities that are involved.
Epic
Epics are larger product feature or a requirement for the software that cannot be completed in one sprint interval.
These features or requirements are divided into smaller chunks so that these can be achieved in a shorter span of a sprint, these smaller chunks of work are user stories. The tasks described in an epic get completed over a couple of sprints.
User Stories
User stories are smaller chunks of product requirements that are achievable goals during sprint by the agile team.
User stories are a set of instructions that are given in simple language for the desired outcome.
The agile team discusses on a daily basis over their assigned user stories, these stories are tracked into burn down reports.
The user story formats or structure are like – As a valid user, I should able to log in to the application so that I can access the features and functionalities of the software.
Product Backlog
The product backlog comprises a list of new product features, changes in any of the features or functionalities, bug or defect fixes, changes in hardware infrastructure in order to enable the team to achieve a specific outcome.
In addition to these, new changes suggested by the client or product owner that gets included at the last moment of the development phase.
A close eye on product backlog is kept by the scrum master and product owner. This helps in defining burn down reports.
Burndown Report
Burndown Report is a pending task against time in graphical format.
A pending task from user stories during sprint interval due to any reasonable reasons specified by developer.
The scrum master and product owner help to remove the impediments due to which tasks are pending.
Product backlog results in a count of pending tasks that are recurring over a couple of sprints.
Velocity Chart
Velocity Chart represents the measure of how much product backlog (pending product features) has been completed during each sprint interval. In other words, the amount of work delivered against committed by the product team.
Velocity chart help product owner to retrospect processes, activities, and responsibilities assigned to team members to deliver the product features. The analysis will help to reassign and educate team members so that they succeed in delivering the pending tasks.
Conclusion
In the prevailing competitive business environment, an agile framework is used by small teams in software companies in delivering product requirements in small increments in regular intervals within one calendar month called a sprint.
Epics are large product features that are divided into user stories which can be achieved by the agile team in the sprint, Product backlog which comprises of changes in product features, new product features, pending bug fixes help to derive burndown report that display pending task against sprint interval, finally, velocity reports help in retrospect how much product feature completed per sprint against committed.
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