Glossary
- Page ID
- 123886
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Word(s) |
Definition |
|---|---|
| 5S | A Lean workplace organization method: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. |
| Agile Governance | Governance that supports responsible value delivery, transparency, risk management, and adaptive decision-making. |
| Agile Metrics | Measurements used by Agile teams to understand progress, flow, quality, risk, and delivery health. |
| Agile Methodology | A structured approach to applying Agile values and principles. Examples include Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, and DSDM. |
| Agile Team | A collaborative team focused on delivering customer value through shared ownership, feedback, and adaptation. |
| Agile Theater | The appearance of Agile through ceremonies, tools, and language without real changes in behavior, empowerment, or value delivery. |
| Agile Transformation | A change in how an organization thinks, decides, funds, measures, governs, learns, and delivers value. |
| Burndown Chart | A chart that shows remaining work over time. |
| Burnup Chart | A chart that shows completed work over time and may also show total scope. |
| Change Management | The structured approach to helping people and organizations move from old ways of working to new ways. |
| Coaching | Helping individuals or teams discover better ways of thinking and working through questions, feedback, and guidance. |
| Constructive Conflict | Healthy disagreement focused on ideas, risks, assumptions, and decisions rather than personal attacks. |
| Continuous Improvement | An ongoing effort to enhance processes, products, or services through incremental changes. |
| Cross-Functional Team | A team that has the combined skills needed to deliver a usable increment of value. |
| Cumulative Flow Diagram | A visual chart showing how work moves through workflow states over time. It helps reveal bottlenecks. |
| Current State | How work actually happens today, including real decision patterns, delays, incentives, and constraints. |
| Cycle Time | The time from when work starts to when it finishes. It shows how long active workflow takes. |
| Definition of Done | The shared quality standard that defines what must be true for work to be considered complete. |
| Dependency | A relationship where work depends on another team, system, vendor, decision, or approval. |
| Developers | The Scrum Team members who create the product increment and manage the Sprint Backlog. |
| Disciplined Agile (DA) | A toolkit that helps teams choose their way of working based on context rather than following one fixed framework. |
| DSDM | A governance-oriented Agile method that emphasizes business involvement, disciplined delivery, and fixing time and cost while allowing scope flexibility. |
| Emotional Intelligence (EQ) | The capacity to recognize, understand, and manage one's own emotions and influence others' emotions. |
| Extreme Programming (XP) | An Agile method focused on technical excellence through practices such as test-driven development, pair programming, refactoring, and continuous integration. |
| Extrinsic Motivation | Drive based on external rewards such as money, status, or recognition. |
| Facilitation | Helping a group have a productive conversation, make decisions, and achieve a shared purpose. |
| Fit-for-Purpose Agility | Choosing Agile practices based on the team's work, risks, customer needs, delivery rhythm, and organizational context. |
| Flow | The movement of work through a system from request to completion. |
| Flow Efficiency | The ratio of active work time to total elapsed time. It helps reveal waiting. |
| Future State | The desired way of working that describes how the organization wants to deliver value, make decisions, and learn. |
| Gap Analysis | The process of identifying differences between current state and future state. |
| Guiding Coalition | A group of leaders and influencers who help drive and support organizational change. |
| Hybrid Agile | An approach that combines Agile and predictive practices when the environment requires both adaptability and governance. |
| Impediment | Anything that blocks or slows the team. |
| Increment | The latest usable version of the product that meets the Definition of Done. |
| Intrinsic Motivation | Drive that comes from internal satisfaction, purpose, mastery, and autonomy. |
| Kanban | A flow-based method that helps teams visualize work, limit work in progress, manage flow, and improve continuously. |
| Key Performance Indicator (KPI) | A measurable value that indicates progress toward a goal. |
| Kotter's 8-Step Change Model | A change model that includes urgency, coalition, vision, volunteer participation, barrier removal, short-term wins, sustained acceleration, and institutionalized change. |
| Lead Time | The time from customer request to delivery. It shows how long the customer waits. |
| Lean | A philosophy and management approach focused on maximizing customer value, reducing waste, improving flow, and respecting people. |
| Mentorship | Guidance provided by an experienced individual to support another's professional development. |
| Muda | Waste, or any activity that does not add value from the customer's perspective. |
| Mura | Unevenness or inconsistency in demand, workload, or process flow. |
| Muri | Overburden placed on people, teams, machines, or systems. |
| Product Backlog | An ordered, evolving list of work needed to improve the product. |
| Product Funding | Funding long-lived products, platforms, or value streams instead of only temporary projects. |
| Product Owner | The Scrum accountability responsible for maximizing product value and ordering the Product Backlog. |
| Psychological Safety | An environment where team members feel safe to take risks, ask questions, and admit mistakes without fear. |
| Pull System | A system where work or materials are pulled based on actual demand and available capacity rather than pushed into the system. |
| RACI Matrix | A responsibility assignment tool defining who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task. |
| Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) | A hierarchical representation of resources organized by category and type. |
| Resource Leveling | Adjusting the schedule to address resource over-allocation, often extending the timeline. |
| Resource Smoothing | Adjusting activities within available float to reduce resource demand peaks without changing the critical path. |
| Retrospective | A structured team reflection to identify improvements for future work. |
| Risk Board | A visual board that makes risks, owners, impact, probability, responses, and status visible. |
| Root Cause Analysis | Techniques for identifying the fundamental reason for a problem. |
| SAFe | Scaled Agile Framework, a broad framework for enterprise Agile alignment and delivery. |
| Scaling Agile | Coordinating Agile work across multiple teams, products, programs, or portfolios. |
| Scrum | An empirical Agile framework that helps teams deliver value through short cycles of planning, inspection, and adaptation. |
| Scrum Master | The Scrum accountability responsible for coaching Scrum, facilitating improvement, and removing impediments. |
| Scrum of Scrums | A lightweight coordination practice for multiple Scrum Teams. |
| Scrumban | A hybrid approach that combines Scrum's structure with Kanban's flow-based practices. |
| Self-Organization | The ability of a team to decide how to accomplish its work within agreed goals, priorities, and constraints. |
| Self-Organizing Team | A team that manages its own work allocation, sequencing, and problem-solving with minimal direction. |
| Servant Leadership | A leadership philosophy focused on serving the team's needs to enable their success. |
| Shared Ownership | The idea that the team collectively owns delivery, quality, improvement, and outcomes. |
| Shu-Ha-Ri | A learning model where people first follow practices, then adapt them, and eventually apply principles with mastery. |
| Spike | A timeboxed investigation used to reduce uncertainty and support better decisions. |
| Sprint | A fixed timebox in Scrum during which the team works toward a Sprint Goal and creates a usable product increment. |
| Sprint Backlog | The selected work for the Sprint plus the Developers' plan for delivering it. |
| Sprint Goal | The focused objective or purpose of the Sprint. |
| Succession Planning | Preparing for leadership and role continuity when key team members transition. |
| Sustainable Pace | A pace of work the team can maintain over time without burnout, quality decline, or hidden risk. |
| Team Development (Tuckman Model) | The stages teams progress through: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. |
| Technical Debt | Shortcuts, weaknesses, or unresolved technical issues that make future change harder. |
| Throughput | The number of completed work items in a period of time. |
| Toyota Production System | Toyota's production philosophy that influenced Lean, just-in-time production, pull systems, continuous improvement, and built-in quality. |
| User Story | A short description of user value, often written as: "As a user, I want a capability, so that I receive a benefit." |
| Vanity Metric | A metric that looks impressive but does not help the team make better decisions or deliver more value. |
| Velocity | The amount of work a team typically completes in a Sprint, often measured in story points. It is useful for team forecasting, not team comparison. |
| WIP Limit | A limit on how much work can be in a workflow step or system at one time. |
| Work in Progress (WIP) | Work that has been started but not yet completed. Too much WIP slows flow and hides problems. |
| Working Agreement | A team-created set of norms that defines how the team collaborates, communicates, makes decisions, and handles blockers. |