Agile

Epic - a collection of user stories

  • epics are delivered over a series of sprints
  • An epic should solve some business case
  • epics can be created around OKRs
  • ex. - the Export to PDF feature would be the epic, while each task associated with accomplishing the feature would be a user story

Before Agile

Before agile appeared on the scene most of the thinking about software process was about understanding requirements early, signing off on these requirements, using the requirements as a basis for design, signing off on that, and then proceeding with construction. This is a plan-driven cycle, often referred to (usually with derision) as the waterfall approach

In order to make agile work, you need a different attitude to design. Instead of thinking of design as a phase, which is mostly completed before you begin construction, you look at design as an on-going process that is interleaved with construction, testing, and even delivery. This is the contrast between planned and evolutionary design.

One of the vital contributions of agile methods is that they have come up with practices that allow evolutionary design to work in a controlled manner. So instead of the common chaos that often happens when design isn't planned up-front, these methods provide techniques to control evolutionary design and make them practical.

One of the tenets of agile methods is that people with different skills and backgrounds need to collaborate very closely together.

Story points

Story points are not a measure of productivity. They are a measure of velocity. We point tickets as a team based on our shared knowledge. If we have a ticket that uses a framework that the person to implement has never used before, we don’t point the ticket any differently. Yes, it will take longer than if it was done by someone who was familiar with the framework, but the idea is that over the course of a year these inconsistencies get evened out.

UE Resources

Scaling Agile: Spotify model


Children
  1. BDD (Behaviour-Driven Development)