5 Common Agile Terms You Probably Ought to Know

And a super short description of each one

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

“Welcome to the Daily Stand-up!” — “That will be dealt with on Tuesday when we have our backlog refinement session.” — “When is the sprint review meeting again??”

Perhaps your company is undergoing an “agile transformation” and you’ve suddenly found yourself working as part of an “agile team” and your calendar is full of meeting requests to things you’ve never heard of before…

Or maybe you’re just an innocent bystander curious to know what these weird terms your friends in the “agile” world are talking about?

Whoever you are, these agile terms have been circulating in the software community for some time and it seems they’re spreading to other industries too.

So here’s a handy pack of sentences for you to memorize!

(And if you’re already an agile nerd, they’re also useful to help you explain to agile newbies, stakeholders or maybe even your partner — who just wants to know, in plain terms, what you’re doing with your life.)

1. The stand-up — a daily window to allow team members to communicate, synchronize activities and highlight roadblocks.
2. The backlog refinement — an opportunity for all members of the team to align their understanding of the work to be done (the “backlog”).
3. The sprint planning — a session in which the team determines the work to be completed during the next few weeks (the “sprint”) and commits to a plan.
4. The sprint review — a chance for the team to get feedback on the work completed during the sprint and update the backlog if needed; an important aspect of the iteration process.
5. The retrospective — a reflection on the way of working during the sprint and the possibility to create actions for improvement during the next one.

So, there you have it — and if you’re thinking “well we do all of these things at my company and we don’t call them funny names or claim to be ‘working agile’!” then good!

You don’t have to call yourselves agile to be agile. :)

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Want to know how to run your first retrospective? See my previous post:

The War on Inaction: 6 Steps to an Effective Retrospective

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