Roles and Responsibilities
This core Agile role is solely responsible for maximizing the value of the product and managing the Product Backlog.
Who is the Product Owner?
This fixed-length, time-boxed period, typically lasting from one to four weeks, is the heart of the Scrum process where development work is actually performed.
What is a sprint?
This popular Agile framework, named from "the rugby approach to managing projects" is often used as the template for new frameworks.
What is Scrum?
Your organization is just starting out, and your project team is deciding how to tackle their first project. It is a well-known product with well-known requirements and strict regulation, but you'd like to be more competitive in the marketplace by doing things in a new way. You decide to use this project management model.
What is hybrid project management, a blend of agile and predictive?
This mindset views a problem or phenomenon holistically, understanding that the development process is one component of a larger business ecosystem, and focusing on the relationship between the whole and its parts.
What is Systems Thinking?
This core leadership strategy defines the philosophy of the Scrum Master role. This is exhibited by the SM's responsibility to remove obstacles, over say, assigning work.
What is servant leadership?
This adaptive planning technique involves detailing the plan only for the near term when visibility is high, and re-planning as more information emerges later in the project.
What is Rolling-Wave Planning?
This visual workflow management method focuses on continuous flow, emphasizing a pull system and managing flow by setting explicit limitations on Work in Process (WIP).
What is Kanban?
Beyond fitting a project's needs, a hybrid approach is often used to help an organization accomplish this transition from a traditional to a more value-driven environment.
What is an agile transformation? Or an enterprise agile transformation?
The core objective of this enterprise-level concept is to plan and maximize the company’s overall return on investment by selecting the right mix of products and managing development efforts to maximize returns.
What is Project/Product Portfolio Management (or Lean Portfolio Management)?
This person's financial responsibilities go beyond managing project costs, often including accountability for the overall business profitability of the product or project.
Who is the product owner or product manager?
This is the highest-level container for large requirements, typically too big to be completed within a single sprint, and must be broken down into smaller User Stories.
What is an Epic? Potentially also Release.
When scaling Agile, this common coordination technique involves sending one representative from each team to a meeting to discuss areas of overlap and potential impediments between multiple Scrum teams.
What is Scrum of Scrums?
This type of contract is often used to transfer risk from the project team to the buyer.
What is a cost-plus contract (or some variation)?
Developers on the team take stories for the upcoming sprint, drawing from the backlog not in strict priority order but based on their skills, on dependencies in the project, and on their capacity as an exemplification of this concept.
What is self-organizing teams?
If a stakeholder came to a developer requesting a report on quarterly value emerging from the project, the developer should do this.
What is refer the stakeholder to the Scrum Master or Agile Coach?
In the context of the Lean Startup approach, this is the version of a new product developed with the least effort necessary to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers.
What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
This most common scaled Agile framework uses a metaphor to help align project work across a program, which fits, because it is driven by an Engineer (choo choo!).
What is SAFe?
In your hybrid project, you weren't able to perform daily standup meetings due to the large team of teams structure. You instead chose to have a representative from each team get together regularly, mimicking this scaled agile framework.
What is Large Scale Scrum, LeSS, or Scrum of Scrums?
A Development Team habitually works on 15 User Stories concurrently in a two-week sprint, leading to frequent integration problems and no completed, "done" software by the sprint review. The team should employ this important concept to ensure better flow of work.
What is smaller batch sizes or reducing work in progress?
In a project team, this person is responsible for ensuring that the different agile teams coordinate their work together across the 5 different sprints that typify the Program Increment.
Who is the release train engineer?
This core adaptive planning principle guides an Agile development lifecycle by requiring that detailed planning or strategic decisions be postponed until the point at which delaying them further would impact project outcomes, thereby ensuring decisions are based on the best available information.
What is the last responsible moment?
This concept is used to help align agile frameworks to predictive needs for check-ins along the way of product development. You need to pass through one before you can move on.
What are phase gates?
Your hybrid project consists of a team of teams. Some of your teams have more experience than others with agile project management. This antipattern is most likely to crop up - it's either cargo cult or scrumfall.
What is cargo cult agile?
Your team is repeatedly fixing the same defect in the product sprint after sprint. This continuous improvement technique should be used to uncover the underlying problem.
What is root cause analysis or the five whys?