Tools
A team notices completed work is frequently waiting days before deployment. Their board shows growing queues between testing and release. This tool would best expose the delay as non-value-adding flow waste.
What is Value Stream Mapping?
During backlog refinement, a team breaks “Build Reporting Module” into API creation, dashboard display, and export functionality. They are applying this technique.
What is Story Slicing?
A Scrum Master notices team silence during retrospectives. Instead of demanding participation, she privately explores concerns, adjusts facilitation methods, and creates safer discussion conditions.
What is Servant Leadership?
This framework emphasizes empirical process control through transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
What is Scrum?
A team needs an approach emphasizing adaptability and method tailoring rather than heavy prescription because project criticality and team size vary significantly.
What is Crystal?
A Product Owner wants forecasting capability without committing to detailed upfront estimates. The team uses historical delivery patterns to support probabilistic completion predictions.
What is Velocity?
A team faces a technically uncertain feature involving new cloud architecture. Before committing estimates, they schedule a timeboxed investigative effort.
What is a Spike?
A team member becomes defensive after peer feedback. The agile leader recognizes emotional triggers, adjusts communication style, and redirects discussion constructively.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Unlike iteration-based frameworks, this method optimizes flow using visualization and pull-based work management.
What is Kanban?
A stakeholder requests detailed scope commitments six months before work begins. The agile practitioner responds using this planning concept.
What is Progressive Elaboration (or Rolling Wave Planning)?
A team lead notices developers beginning numerous stories but finishing very few. Rather than assigning additional oversight, she introduces this mechanism to improve throughput.
What are WIP Limits?
Two developers jointly work at one workstation on a difficult integration issue to improve quality and shared ownership. This engineering practice is:
What is Pair Programming?
A critical architectural disagreement threatens delivery. Because both solution quality and team relationships are important, the agile leader uses this conflict approach.
What is Collaborating?
A framework known for technical excellence, pair programming, TDD, and sustainable pace.
What is Extreme Programming (XP)?
This framework organizes work primarily around developing client-valued features completed within short timeframes.
What is Feature-Driven Development (FDD)?
A team’s burndown appears healthy, yet stakeholder confidence continues falling because delivered scope growth is invisible. The more appropriate reporting tool is:
What is a Burnup Chart?
Rather than waiting for sprint end to merge code, developers integrate and test changes frequently throughout development.
What is Continuous Integration?
An experienced developer teaches coding techniques while helping a junior teammate improve immediate task performance.
What is Coaching?
This agile approach prioritizes elimination of waste, fast feedback loops, and maximizing customer value.
What is Lean?
This framework stresses frequent delivery, close communication, and people-centric adaptability over heavy process controls.
What is Crystal?
An agile team wants to understand why defect rates spike after integrations. Rather than immediately implementing solutions, they first organize contributing causes into categories.
What is a Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram?
A facilitator notices estimation conversations dominated by senior voices. To reduce anchoring bias while preserving collaboration, the team adopts this estimation technique.
What is Planning Poker?
An agile leader delegates decision authority to the team, encourages experimentation, and tolerates productive failure to strengthen ownership.
What is Empowering Self-Organizing Teams?
An organization needing large-scale alignment across many agile teams implements this framework featuring Agile Release Trains.
What is SAFe?
An organization wants strong business involvement, strict delivery timelines, and governance while remaining agile.
What is DSDM? (Dynamic Systems Development Method)