Yuriy Zubarev

Cynical Agile and Scrum Dictionary

2012-04-24

As a reader with a sense of humor,
I want to find down-to-earth definitions,
So that I can smile, frown, and reflect.

Agile
  1. a faith
  2. is whatever you want it to be to achieve what you need to achieve
Agile Certification
  1. a pilot license that both an eagle and an elephant can easily obtain
Agile Manifesto
  1. a document that tipped the balance from analysis paralysis to refactor distractor
  2. a proof that principles are often mistaken for rules
  3. a license for avoiding documentation, and not having a plan
Backlog
  1. a land of forgotten dreams
BDD
  1. an ironic example of a development community building tools for non developers, and ending up being the only ones using them
Burn Down
  1. a condition of a Development Team at the end of a Sprint
Code Review
  1. the most common example of Technical Debt
  2. a process of curing root rot by trimming leaves
Continuous Delivery
  1. a blockbuster sequel to Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration
  1. a good idea turned into a semi-automated Continuous Disaster
Daily Scrum or Daily Stand-up
  1. weekly two-hour long meeting
  2. the three forbidden questions we never speak of
  3. a license not to talk to your team members in between stand-ups
Development Team
  1. is the same as Development Team in waterfall but with an added illusion of empowerment
DevOps
  1. a new breed of professionals who can write “Hello World” and deploy it to Heroku
DDD
  1. a methodology so advanced that it could only be used once to produce the venerable TimeAndMoney
  2. Deadline Driven Development
Emergent Design
  1. a process in which parents who read Tarzan abandon their infant in a forest only to see it grow into Bigfoot
Enterprise Agile
  1. an oxymoron
Evolutionary Architecture
  1. a process equally capable of producing hummingbirds as well as vampire bats
Extreme Programming (XP)
  1. a methodology that was so extreme that it’s not practiced anymore
Feedback
  1. a rare and valuable currency of Agile: everybody wants to receive it, nobody wants to give it away
Impediment
  1. a manifestation of organizational culture
Kanban
  1. a paradox where the Software Development industry tries very hard to differentiate itself from traditional manufacturing systems by borrowing a method originated in those very systems
  2. an example that anything sounds more legitimate if it’s in Japanese
Pair Programming
  1. an unsolved puzzle for economists, managers, and compensation specialists
Planning Poker
  1. a parody on a real poker: everybody bluffs that they don’t know the hands and the next moves, and pretend to have fun
Product Owner
  1. a guardian to protect Stakeholders from an unwashed Development Team
Refactoring
  1. a word one says before one sins
  2. a source to bail out the global economy if Development Teams had one dollar for every promise to refactor
Scrum
  1. a religion
  2. a commercialization of Agile
Scrum/Agile Project Management Software
  1. a kick in the stomach to the first principle of Agile Manifesto
Scrum Master
  1. a person who removes stumbling blocks and in so-doing eventually self destructs
  2. a person with a stopwatch, a squeaky toy, and a whistle
Software Craftsmanship
  1. an effort to turn one’s hobby into a full time job and have one’s employer to pay for it
Spike
  1. a gas pedal for a Velocity of a Sprint
Sprint
  1. an enchanted quest to collect magical Story Points
Sprint Planning
  1. a meeting where bells and whistles are prioritized over nuts and bolts
Sprint Retrospective
  1. a mystical meeting that is always skipped to give the next Sprint more time
Sprint Review
  1. a meeting ignored by Stakeholders
  2. a ceremony where a production crew is watching their own movie and is handing themselves the Oscar statuette
Stakeholders
  1. people who secretly hate Agile
Story Points
  1. a relative measure of absolute inability to estimate
TDD
  1. an approach to build a car with hundred air bags and no engine
Technical Debt
  1. a measurement of a sentiment of a Development Team
  2. a plague ship that always sinks to the bottom of a Backlog
User Story
  1. an oversimplification of requirements to the level where it’s embarrassing to read it, so nobody does
Velocity
  1. the next best thing after real results
xDD Family of Methodologies
  1. a choir made up of prophets each singing their own hymns
 

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