Agile Cheat Sheet

Agile Overview

• Purpose: Promote adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement.

• Key Characteristics: Iterative, flexible, and customer-focused.

• Primary Goal: Deliver high-quality products quickly by breaking projects into smaller, manageable increments (sprints).

Agile Manifesto Values

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

4. Responding to change over following a plan.

Agile Principles

• Customer Satisfaction: Deliver valuable software frequently (e.g., every 2-4 weeks).

• Welcome Change: Embrace changes even late in development.

• Frequent Delivery: Deliver working software regularly (in sprints or iterations).

• Collaboration: Business and development teams work together daily.

• Simplicity: Maximize work not done (focus on essentials).

• Self-Organizing Teams: Teams should be empowered to make decisions.

Agile Frameworks

• Scrum: Focuses on roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team) and time-boxed iterations (sprints).

• Kanban: Visualizes workflow with focus on continuous delivery and limiting work in progress (WIP).

• Lean: Focuses on eliminating waste, optimizing processes, and delivering value faster.

• Extreme Programming (XP): Emphasizes engineering practices like test-driven development (TDD) and pair programming.

Key Agile Roles

• Product Owner: Manages the product backlog, defines priorities, and represents stakeholders.

• Scrum Master: Facilitates the process, removes roadblocks, and ensures the team follows agile practices.

• Development Team: Self-organizing and cross-functional, responsible for delivering product increments.

Agile Ceremonies (Scrum)

• Sprint Planning: Plan the work for the upcoming sprint, define sprint goals, and break down user stories.

• Daily Standup: Short, daily meeting (usually 15 minutes) to sync progress, identify blockers, and plan the day's work.

• Sprint Review: Demonstrate the work completed during the sprint to stakeholders and gather feedback.

• Sprint Retrospective: Reflect on the sprint process, identify what went well, what didn’t, and propose improvements.

Agile Artifacts (Scrum)

• Product Backlog: A prioritized list of features, bugs, and tasks for the product.

• Sprint Backlog: A list of tasks to be completed during the current sprint.

• Increment: A working product or a deliverable at the end of the sprint.

• Burndown Chart: Tracks remaining work over time to measure progress towards sprint completion.

Agile Metrics & KPIs

• Velocity: The amount of work completed in a sprint (measured in story points).

• Cycle Time: Time taken to complete a task from start to finish.

• Lead Time: Time between a request being made and the work being delivered.

• Sprint Burndown: Tracks progress during the sprint by showing remaining tasks.

• Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD): Visualizes the flow of tasks through different stages (e.g., backlog, in progress, done).

Agile Best Practices

• Frequent Delivery: Deliver small, functional increments frequently for faster feedback.

• Continuous Feedback: Regularly gather and incorporate customer feedback into the development process.

• T-Shaped Skills: Encourage team members to develop skills beyond their core expertise to improve team collaboration.

• Test-Driven Development (TDD): Write automated tests before developing features to ensure code quality.

• Pair Programming: Two developers work together on the same code to enhance quality and knowledge sharing.

Common Agile Challenges

• Resistance to Change: Team members or stakeholders may resist adopting new practices.

• Scope Creep: Difficulty managing changing requirements without proper controls.

• Lack of Agile Experience: Teams without proper training may struggle to implement Agile effectively.

• Misaligned Expectations: Stakeholders may not fully understand the iterative nature of Agile, leading to misunderstandings.

• Distributed Teams: Communication challenges may arise when teams are not co-located.

This cheat sheet covers Agile basics, frameworks, roles, ceremonies, and best practices to help teams deliver effectively using Agile methodologies.

#AgileDevelopment #ScrumFramework #ContinuousDelivery #SprintPlanning #CollaborativeTeams