Certified Agile Project Manager (Cert.APM) Exam Study Flashcard

An Agile Coach is a professional who helps teams and organizations adopt and improve Agile practices. They provide guidance, mentoring, and training to facilitate Agile transformations and enhance team performance.

Burndown Rate is the rate at which work is completed during a Sprint or project. It is calculated by dividing the amount of work remaining by the number of days left in the Sprint or project.

A Feature Toggle is a technique used to enable or disable specific features of a software application without deploying new code. It allows for incremental releases and controlled experimentation.

Release Planning Poker is a consensus-based estimation technique used to determine the effort required for features or User Stories in a release plan. It involves team members discussing and assigning story points to each item.

Release Planning involves defining and scheduling the delivery of features and functionality to customers. It aligns the product roadmap with business goals and customer needs, and often includes setting priorities and timelines.

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a role in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) responsible for facilitating and managing the Agile Release Train (ART), ensuring that teams work collaboratively to deliver value and adhere to Agile principles.

The Scrum Master is a role in Scrum responsible for ensuring that the team adheres to Scrum practices and principles. They act as a facilitator, coach, and protector of the team, helping to remove obstacles and improve processes.

The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product by managing the Product Backlog, ensuring that the team understands the priorities and requirements, and representing the customer’s needs and interests.

Technical Debt refers to the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. It accumulates over time and can impact the maintainability of the codebase.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where code changes are automatically tested and integrated into the shared codebase frequently, typically multiple times a day, to detect and address integration issues early.

Kanban is a visual management method for workflow optimization. It uses a Kanban board to represent work items and their progress through stages, promoting continuous delivery and improvement by visualizing and limiting work in progress.

Scrum is an Agile framework used to manage and complete complex projects. It emphasizes iterative progress through sprints, regular feedback, and collaboration among team members, and includes roles like Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team.

An Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived team of Agile teams that incrementally develops, delivers, and operates a solution, typically using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). ARTs align teams to deliver value in a coordinated manner.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a framework for scaling Agile practices to larger organizations and complex projects. It provides structured guidance on roles, responsibilities, and practices across multiple teams and levels of the organization.

A Sprint Goal is a short, clear objective that defines what the team aims to achieve in a Sprint. It provides focus and direction for the team and helps in prioritizing the work to be completed during the Sprint.

Pair programming is a practice where two developers work together at one workstation: one writes code (the "driver") while the other reviews and provides feedback (the "observer" or "navigator"). This practice enhances code quality and knowledge sharing.

A Product Increment is the sum of all completed Product Backlog items during a Sprint and all previous Sprints. It represents the latest version of the product that is potentially shippable and adds value.

The Development Team is a cross-functional group responsible for delivering potentially shippable product increments each Sprint. They self-organize to complete the work defined in the Sprint Backlog and ensure high quality.

An Epic is a large, high-level User Story or feature that can be broken down into smaller, more manageable User Stories or tasks. It represents significant functionality or deliverables that span multiple Sprints.

Incremental Delivery is the process of delivering a product or feature in small, manageable pieces, or increments. Each increment builds upon previous ones, allowing for early feedback and continuous improvement.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the most basic version of a product that is released to the market to validate hypotheses and gather user feedback. It contains just enough features to meet the primary needs of early adopters.

Scrum Artifacts are key outputs of Scrum that provide transparency and opportunities for inspection and adaptation. They include the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Increment, which help in managing and tracking work.

Scrum of Scrums is a scaled Agile practice where representatives from multiple Scrum Teams meet regularly to coordinate and discuss inter-team dependencies, challenges, and progress towards a common goal.

A User Story Acceptance Test is a set of conditions or criteria used to verify whether a User Story has been implemented correctly and meets the requirements specified. It ensures the functionality is delivered as expected.

Servant Leadership is a leadership style where the leader’s primary focus is on serving the needs of their team members, helping them grow and perform effectively. It emphasizes empathy, listening, and support over traditional top-down management.

T-shaped skills refer to individuals who have a broad range of knowledge across multiple disciplines (the horizontal bar of the "T") and deep expertise in one specific area (the vertical bar of the "T"). This promotes both versatility and specialization within a team.

Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a team completes in a Sprint, usually expressed in story points or effort estimates. It helps in predicting future performance and planning future Sprints.

The four key values are: 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.

The three pillars of Scrum are Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation. These pillars support the Scrum framework by ensuring that the process is open, regularly reviewed, and adjusted as needed.

Acceptance Criteria are predefined conditions or requirements that a User Story or feature must meet to be considered complete and acceptable. They ensure that the functionality is delivered as expected and meets the customer’s needs.

Agile Contracting is a contractual approach that aligns with Agile principles, focusing on collaboration, flexibility, and value delivery. It typically involves iterative delivery and evolving requirements rather than fixed scopes and rigid agreements.

Agile Portfolio Management involves managing and prioritizing a portfolio of projects and initiatives using Agile principles. It ensures that resources are allocated effectively to align with business goals and deliver maximum value.

Backlog Refinement (or Backlog Grooming) is an ongoing process where the Product Owner and team review, revise, and prioritize the Product Backlog to ensure it is well-defined and ready for upcoming Sprints.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is an Agile practice that emphasizes collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders to define and deliver desired behaviors of a system. It uses examples and scenarios to drive development and testing.

Continuous Delivery (CD) is a practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for release to production, enabling teams to release software at any time with minimal manual intervention.

A Cross-functional Team is a team composed of members with diverse skills and expertise necessary to complete a project or deliver a product increment. It promotes collaboration and reduces dependencies on external teams.

Empirical Process Control is a fundamental concept in Agile that relies on observation, experimentation, and adaptation. It emphasizes making decisions based on real data and feedback rather than predictions or predefined plans.

Feature Creep refers to the tendency for new features or requirements to be added to a project or product after the initial scope has been defined. It can lead to scope expansion, delays, and increased complexity.

Kanban WIP (Work In Progress) Limit is a constraint on the number of work items allowed in a particular stage of the workflow at any given time. It helps in managing flow, reducing multitasking, and improving focus.

A Spike is a time-boxed research or exploration activity used to investigate a problem, gain knowledge, or reduce uncertainty before committing to a solution or implementing a User Story.

Sprint Planning is a meeting held at the beginning of each Sprint where the team and Product Owner discuss the goals for the Sprint, select items from the Product Backlog, and plan how to accomplish them.

Story Point Estimation is a technique used to estimate the relative effort required to complete a User Story. It is a measure of complexity, effort, or risk and helps in planning and prioritization.

Team Dynamics refers to the patterns of interaction, communication, and collaboration among team members. Effective team dynamics contribute to higher productivity, better problem-solving, and overall team performance.

User Story Mapping is a technique for visualizing and organizing User Stories in a way that helps understand the user’s journey and prioritize features. It involves mapping stories along a timeline or workflow to align with user needs and business goals.

Value Stream Mapping is a Lean tool used to analyze and optimize the flow of materials and information through a value stream. It helps identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement in the process.

Velocity Tracking involves monitoring the amount of work a team completes in each Sprint, measured in story points or other units. It helps in forecasting future work capacity and improving estimation accuracy.

A Release Burnup Chart is a visual tool that tracks progress towards the completion of a release by showing the amount of work completed over time compared to the total work planned.

A Burndown Chart is a visual representation of work remaining versus time in a Sprint or project. It shows the progress of completing work and helps teams track if they are on target to complete the planned work.

The Product Backlog is a prioritized list of features, enhancements, and bug fixes that the Product Owner maintains for the development team. It represents the work to be done to achieve the project’s goals.

A Scrum Board is a visual tool used to track the progress of tasks in a Sprint. It typically includes columns for different stages of work (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done) and helps the team manage and visualize their workflow.

A Sprint is a time-boxed iteration, typically lasting 2-4 weeks, during which a specific set of features or functionality is developed and delivered. The goal is to produce a potentially shippable product increment by the end of each Sprint.

A Sprint Retrospective is a meeting held at the end of a Sprint where the team reflects on the past Sprint, discusses what went well, what didn’t, and how processes can be improved in future Sprints.

A Sprint Review is a meeting held at the end of a Sprint where the team presents the completed work to stakeholders, reviews the increment, and gathers feedback. It helps in adapting the Product Backlog based on new insights.

A User Story is a short, simple description of a feature or functionality from the perspective of an end user. It typically follows the format: "As a [user], I want [goal] so that [reason]."

An Increment is a tangible, working product feature or enhancement delivered by the end of a Sprint. It should be a usable and potentially shippable piece of functionality that adds value to the product.

The Agile Manifesto is a declaration of the values and principles that guide Agile methodologies. It emphasizes individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change over processes and tools, comprehensive documentation, contract negotiation, and following a plan.

The Definition of Done (DoD) is a clear and shared understanding of what it means for a product increment or User Story to be considered complete. It typically includes criteria for code quality, testing, documentation, and functionality.

The Daily Stand-up Meeting, or Daily Scrum, is a brief, time-boxed meeting where team members share updates on what they’ve accomplished, what they plan to work on next, and any impediments they are facing. Its purpose is to foster communication and alignment.

The Product Owner is responsible for defining the features of the product, maintaining the Product Backlog, prioritizing work based on business value, and ensuring the team delivers value to the customer.

The Scrum Master is responsible for facilitating Scrum practices, removing impediments, coaching the team on Agile practices, and ensuring that Scrum processes are followed. They serve as a servant-leader to the Scrum Team.