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Agile glossary
28 terms, each with a one-sentence definition you can quote, two paragraphs of substance, and a plain statement of whether Flocci Projects actually models the concept — including the several it does not, such as burndown charts, swimlanes and enforced WIP limits.
- AgileAgile is an approach to product development that delivers work in short increments and re-plans as it learns, instead of committing to a full specification up front.
- Backlog refinementBacklog refinement (formerly 'grooming') is the recurring habit of clarifying, splitting, estimating and deleting items at the top of the backlog so they are ready to plan.
- BlockerA blocker is anything preventing an in-flight item from progressing — a missing decision, an unavailable dependency, an unanswered question.
- Burndown chartA burndown chart plots the work remaining in a sprint day by day, falling toward zero, so a team can see whether it is on track to finish.
- Burnup chartA burnup chart plots completed work rising toward a separate total-scope line, so both progress and scope change are visible at once.
- Cycle timeCycle time measures how long an item takes from the moment work actually starts on it to the moment it is done.
- Daily standupA daily standup is a short team meeting — fifteen minutes or less — to coordinate the day's work and surface blockers.
- Definition of doneThe definition of done is a shared checklist every item must satisfy before it counts as complete — typically reviewed, tested, merged, deployed and documented.
- Definition of readyThe definition of ready is the checklist an item must satisfy before it can enter a sprint: clear title, enough description to estimate, sized, and no blocking dependency.
- EpicAn epic is a body of work too large to finish in one sprint, split into smaller stories that each deliver a testable slice of value.
- KanbanKanban is a flow-based method where work moves continuously through columns and the team limits how much is in progress at once.
- Lead timeLead time measures the whole wait a requester experiences: from the moment a request is made to the moment it is delivered.
- Planning pokerPlanning poker is estimation by simultaneous reveal: everyone privately picks a story-point value, all reveal at once, and only the outliers are discussed.
- Product backlogThe product backlog is the single, priority-ordered list of everything the team might build — features, bugs and improvements — with the top kept ready to plan.
- Product ownerThe product owner is accountable for what gets built and for the order of the backlog — the person whose job includes saying no.
- RetrospectiveA retrospective is a short meeting at the end of each sprint where the team inspects how it worked and commits to one or two concrete improvements.
- ScrumScrum is an agile framework built on fixed-length sprints, three accountabilities (product owner, scrum master, developers) and a cycle of planning, review and retrospective.
- Scrum masterThe scrum master is accountable for how the team works: facilitating the ceremonies, protecting the sprint from mid-flight scope, and removing impediments.
- SprintA sprint is a fixed-length timebox — usually one or two weeks — in which a team commits to a scope of work and delivers a usable increment.
- Sprint goalA sprint goal is one sentence describing the outcome the sprint is for, written so a non-engineer understands it.
- Sprint planningSprint planning is the meeting where a team selects which ready backlog items fit this sprint's capacity and writes the sprint goal.
- Sprint reviewA sprint review is where the team demonstrates completed work to stakeholders and collects feedback that reshapes the backlog.
- Story pointA story point is a relative unit of size, capturing effort, complexity and uncertainty together, usually on the Fibonacci scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13).
- SwimlaneA swimlane is a horizontal band across a kanban board that separates one class of work from another — by team, by priority or by workstream.
- ThroughputThroughput is the number of work items a team completes per unit of time — a count, unlike velocity, which is a sum of points.
- User storyA user story is a small, user-visible slice of value that fits inside one sprint and can be demonstrated — traditionally phrased as 'as a [user] I want [x] so that [y]'.
- VelocityVelocity is the number of story points a team completes per sprint, averaged over the last three to five sprints and used to forecast how much fits in the next one.
- WIP limitA WIP (work-in-progress) limit caps how many items may sit in a column at once, forcing the team to finish something before starting anything new.
Why the "not implemented" notes are there
A glossary published by a vendor is only useful if it tells you where the vendor's product stops. Burndown charts, burnup charts, swimlanes, numeric WIP-limit enforcement, throughput reports and cycle-time reports are all defined here and all absent from Flocci Projects — you can read the definition and then go and find the tool that implements it. That is a better outcome for you than a definition that quietly implies we have it.
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