Category: Scrum Master

RightMove is the Necromancer of My New House 💀

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The keys are in your hand, the mortgage is a fresh, twenty-five-year chain around your neck, and you think you’ve finally acquired a castle of your own. You’ve successfully concluded the Capitalist Rite of Passage by purchasing my house, and you’re ready to start living.

Oh, sweet, heavily-indebted pioneer. You may own the brick and mortar, but the Digital Ghost of Your Dwelling is still watching, and it’s staring through the digital lens of the internet’s most efficient data-hoarding overlord: RightMove.

RightMove isn’t a property portal; it’s a sentient, all-archiving Ministry of Truth… but for laminate flooring and the regrettable choice of kitchen splashback. It is the architectural equivalent of the Eye of Sauron, perpetually holding the images, the floorplans, and the very dimensions of my private sanctuary hostage. It keeps a perfect, unerasable record of the house before you—a record I now live inside, constantly reminding me of the previous owner’s beige nightmares.

I successfully executed a complex, multi-sprint project to acquire the dwelling. But when I attempted to exercise my basic Article 17 Right to Erasure—the mythical ability to make The Algorithm forget the property’s historical existence—the system responded with a chilling, automated laugh and a demand for a Sacred Legal Artefact.

The Bureaucratic Black Hole and The Data Seance Scrum

The property purchase was legally completed over a year ago. The data—the images of my home, the identifying features of my existence—is, by any sane metric, no longer necessary for the purpose it was collected. It is now merely a data-point in the Sprint Backlog of Perpetual Surveillance that RightMove calls its archive.

I formally notified the Necromancers of Property Data, invoking my Right to Object (Article 21) to their alleged “legitimate interest” in maintaining an archive. That interest? To keep a permanent record of what my curtains look like, purely for the joy of future identity thieves and bored stalkers.

My fundamental right to privacy, my control over the digital projection of my own life, apparently rates somewhere below the value of historical data integrity on RightMove’s corporate JIRA board.

This, my friends, is the Agile Apocalyptic Framework in full swing. The framework dictates that the customer (me) is always wrong, and the data (the photo of the garden shed) must be perpetually iterated, refined, and retained against all human logic.

The Illusion of Law and The Data Brokering Black Market

This is where the humour bleeds out and the true dystopian horror begins.

We think we have control. We cling to the faded pamphlet of the UK GDPR, believing the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or the FCA are our valiant white knights. They are not. They are merely glorified, underfunded receptionists for the big corporations. When the ICO finally decides to look up from its annual compliance tea-break, it invariably finds a way to side with the giant entity that can afford the better legal team, effectively rubber-stamping the continuous brokering of your life.

To prove my identity and link to the data, I provided a Driving Licence. RightMove rejected it. They demand the Title Register or the Deeds. They require I embark on a Hero’s Journey, a Conveyancing Pilgrimage for the Sacred Scroll of Ownership, just to delete a blurry photograph of a kitchen counter.

This is an excessive and disproportionate burden (Article 12) designed to make you give up and weep. They are demanding proof of my ontological self because they are not just dealing with my house pictures; they are brokering away data about me I don’t even know exists.

They canvas all data they can get their hands on—social media posts, dodgy, unsanctioned job references, electoral roll snippets. And here’s the most chilling part of the Agile Data-Gathering Manifesto: if there are gaps in the data they hoover up, they don’t just stop. They either make it up or, worse, imply guilt.

A data gap means you were up to something BAD. The absence of a particular piece of financial or personal information becomes a “black mark” against your score, an un-erasable stain on your digital soul because they cannot find the data. RightMove’s refusal to erase my house’s history is part of this ecosystem—maintaining a permanent, identifiable marker so the brokers can cross-reference, validate, and sell a richer, more actionable profile of myself, the Data Subject.

Final Notice: The Digital Data Purge Begins in Seven Days

The statutory deadline for them to act is already underway. Their refusal to accept adequate proof is merely a delay tactic in the Scrum of Eternal Data Retention.

This is my final formal notice. Seven calendar days, RightMove.

If the ghost of my castle is not permanently exorcised from your servers and all third-party platforms under your unholy command, I will be escalating this matter to the ICO. My complaint will cite your spectacular, demonstrable failure to adhere to the principles of proportionality, and your existence as a prime example of an institution that believes its archive is more important than the privacy, sanity, and fundamental rights of the people whose lives you archive and actively broker.

The only way to win against a Necromancer of Data is to start the Digital Data Purge. Expect the first sprint to involve the rusty server, a very large hammer, and the sweet sound of GDPR Compliance Through Extreme Prejudice.

AI, Agile, and Accidental Art Theft

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There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the business world is for, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. This certainly goes a long way to explaining the current corporate strategy for dealing with Artificial Intelligence, which is to largely ignore it, in the same way that a startled periwinkle might ignore an oncoming bulldozer, hoping that if it doesn’t make any sudden moves the whole “unsettling” situation will simply settle down.

This is, of course, a terrible strategy, because while everyone is busy not looking, the bulldozer is not only getting closer, it’s also learning to draw a surprisingly good, yet legally dubious, cartoon mouse.

We live in an age of what is fashionably called “Agile,” a term which here seems to mean “The Art of Controlled Panic.” It’s a frantic, permanent state of trying to build the aeroplane while it’s already taxiing down the runway, fueled by lukewarm coffee and a deep-seated fear of the next quarterly review. For years, the panic-release valve was off-shoring. When a project was on fire, you could simply bundle up your barely coherent requirements and fling them over the digital fence to a team in another time zone, hoping they’d throw back a working solution before morning.

Now, we have perfected this model. AI is the new, ultimate off-shoring. The team is infinitely scalable, works for pennies, and is located somewhere so remote it isn’t even on a map. It’s in “The Cloud,” a place that is reassuringly vague and requires no knowledge of geography whatsoever.

The problem is, this new team is a bit weird. You still need that one, increasingly stressed-out human—let’s call them the Prompt Whisperer—to translate the frantic, contradictory demands of the business into a language the machine will understand. They are the new middle manager, bridging the vast, terrifying gap between human chaos and silicon logic. But there’s a new, far more alarming, item in their job description.

You see, the reason this new offshore team is so knowledgeable is because it has been trained by binge-watching the entire internet. Every film, every book, every brand logo, every cat picture, and every episode of every cartoon ever made. And as the ongoing legal spat between the Disney/Universal behemoth and the AI art platform Midjourney demonstrates, the hangover from this creative binge is about to kick in with the force of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

The issue, for any small business cheerfully using an AI to design their new logo, is one of copyright. In the US, they have a principle called “fair use,” which is a wonderfully flexible and often confusing set of rules. In the UK, we have “fair dealing,” which is a narrower, more limited set of rules that is, in its own way, just as confusing. If the difference between the two seems unclear, then congratulations, you have understood the central point perfectly: you are almost certainly in trouble.

The AI, you see, doesn’t create. It remixes. And it has no concept of ownership. Ask it to design a logo for your artisanal doughnut shop, and it might cheerfully serve up something that looks uncannily like the beloved mascot of a multi-billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate. The AI isn’t your co-conspirator; it’s the unthinking photocopier, and you’re the one left holding the legally radioactive copy. Your brilliant, cost-effective branding exercise has just become a business-ending legal event.

So, here we are, practicing the art of controlled panic on a legal minefield. The new off-shored intelligence is a powerful, dangerous, and creatively promiscuous force. That poor Prompt Whisperer isn’t just briefing the machine anymore; they are its parole officer, desperately trying to stop it from cheerfully plagiarizing its way into oblivion. The only thing that hasn’t “settled down” is the dust from the first wave of cease-and-desist letters. And they are, I assure you, on their way.

Hiring Ghosts & Other Modern Inconveniences

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So, LinkedIn, in its infinite, algorithmically-optimised wisdom, sent me an email and posed a question: Has generative AI transformed how you hire?

Oh, you sweet, innocent, content-moderated darlings. Has the introduction of the self-service checkout had any minor, barely noticeable effect on the traditional art of conversing with a cashier? Has the relentless efficiency of Amazon Prime in any way altered our nostalgic attachment to a Saturday afternoon browse down the local high street? Has the invention of streaming services had any small impact on the business model of your local Blockbuster video?

Yes. Duh.

You see, the modern hiring process is no longer about finding a person for a role. It is a wonderfully ironic Turing Test in reverse. The candidate, a squishy carbon-based lifeform full of anxieties and a worrying coffee dependency, uses a vast, non-sentient silicon brain to convince you they are worthy. You, another squishy carbon-based lifeform, must then use your own flawed, meat-based intuition to decide if the ghost in their machine is a good fit for the ghost in your machine.

The CV is dead. It is a relic, a beautifully formatted PDF of lies composed by a language model that has read every CV ever written and concluded that the ideal candidate is a rock-climbing, volunteer-firefighting, Python-coding polymath who is “passionate about synergy.” The cover letter? It’s a work of algorithmically generated fiction, a poignant, computer-dreamed ode to a job it doesn’t understand for a company it has never heard of.

So, are you hiring a person, or the AI-powered spectre of that person? A LinkedIn profile is no longer a testament to a career; it’s a monument to successful prompt engineering.

To truly prove consciousness in 2025, a candidate needs a blog. A podcast. A YouTube channel where they film themselves, unshaven and twitching, wrestling with a piece of code while muttering about the futility of existence. We require a verifiable, time-stamped proof of life to show they haven’t simply outsourced their entire professional identity to a subscription service.

Meanwhile, the Great Career Shuffle accelerates. An entire car-crash multitude of ex-banking staff, their faces etched with the horror of irrelevance, are now desperately rebranding as “AI strategists.” The banks themselves are becoming quaint, like steam museums, while the real action—the glorious, three-month contracts of frantic, venture-capital-fueled chaos—is in the AI startups.

It all feels so familiar. It’s that old freelance feeling, where your CV wasn’t a document but a long list of weapons in your arsenal. You needed a bow with a string for every conceivable software battle. One week it was pure HTML+CSS. The next, you were a warrior in the trenches of the Great Plugin Wars, wrestling the bloated, beautiful behemoth of Flash until, almost overnight, it was rendered obsolete by the sleek, sanctimonious assassin that was HTML5.

The backend was a wilder frontier. A company demanded you wrestle with the hydra of PHP, be it WordPress, Drupal, or the dark arts of Magento if a checkout was involved. For a brief, shining moment, everything was meant to be built on the elegant railway tracks of Ruby. Then came the Javascript Tsunami, a wave so vast it swept over both the front and back ends, leaving a tangled mess that developers are still trying to untangle to this day.

And the enterprise world? A mandatory pilgrimage to the great, unkillable temple of Java. The backend architecture evolved from the stuffy, formal rituals of SOAP APIs to the breezy, freewheeling informality of REST. Then came the Great Atomisation, an obsession with breaking monoliths into a thousand tiny microservices, putting each one in a little digital box with Docker, and then hiring an entirely new army of engineers just to plumb all the boxes back together again. If you had a bit of COBOL, the banks would pay you a king’s ransom to poke their digital dinosaurs. A splash of SQL always won the day.

On top of all this, the Agile evangelists descended, an army of Scrum Masters who achieved sentience overnight and promptly promoted themselves to “Agile Coaches,” selling certifications and a brand of corporate mindfulness that fixed precisely nothing. All of it, every last trend, every rise and fall and rise again of Java, was just a slow, inexorable death march towards the beige, soul-crushing mediocracy of the Microsoft stack—a sprawling empire of .NET and Azure so bland and full of holes that every junior hacker treats it as a welcome mat.

AI is just the latest, shiniest weapon to add to the rack.

So, in the spirit of this challenge, here are my Top Tips for Candidates Navigating This New World:

  1. Stop Writing Your CV. Your new job is to become the creative director for the AI that writes your CVs for you. Learn its quirks. Feed it your soul. Your goal is not to be the best candidate, but to operate the best candidate-generating machine.
  2. Manufacture Authenticity. That half-finished blog post from 2019? Resurrect it. That opinion you had about coffee? Turn it into a podcast. Your real CV is your digital footprint. Prove you exist beyond a series of prompts.
  3. Embrace Glorious Insecurity. The job you’re applying for will be automated, outsourced, or rendered utterly irrelevant by a new model release in six months anyway. Stop thinking about a career ladder. There is no ladder. There is only a chaotic, unpredictable, exhilarating wave. Learn to surf.

The whole thing is, of course, gloriously absurd. We are using counterfeit intelligence to apply for counterfeit jobs in a counterfeit economy. And we have the audacity to call it progress.

#LinkedInNewsEurope

When Life’s a Limerick

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In a world increasingly powered by AI, geopolitical tension, and the lingering mystery of where your socks actually go, the sheer, unadulterated nonsense of it all has finally caught up. It’s gotten so wonderfully, ridiculously absurd that plain old prose just won’t cut it anymore. So, for the next few days, I’m ditching logic, embracing the lyrical, and discussing the modern world—including the baffling beauty of Agile methodologies—one witty limerick at a time. Prepare for rhyme, rhythm, and possibly a sudden urge to tap your foot.

Navigating the Absurd with Rhyme

A keen Agile team, quite precise, 
Gave old Waterfall sound advice. 
"For sprints short and bright, 
We code through the night, 
Fuelled by coffee, at any old price!"

When Life’s a Limerick

Posted on Posted in Agile, AI, Leonardo.ai, Scrum Master, shiel yuleTagged , Leave a comment

In a world increasingly powered by AI, geopolitical tension, and the lingering mystery of where your socks actually go, the sheer, unadulterated nonsense of it all has finally caught up. It’s gotten so wonderfully, ridiculously absurd that plain old prose just won’t cut it anymore. So, for the next few days, I’m ditching logic, embracing the lyrical, and discussing the modern world—including the baffling beauty of Agile methodologies—one witty limerick at a time. Prepare for rhyme, rhythm, and possibly a sudden urge to tap your foot.

Navigating the Absurd with Rhyme

A keen Agile team, quite precise, 
Gave old Waterfall sound advice. 
"For sprints short and bright, 
We code through the night, 
Fuelled by coffee, at any old price!"

Trump Show 2.0 and the Agile Singularity

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Monday holiday, you’re doom scrolling away. Just a casual dip into the dopamine stream. You must know now that your entire worldview is curated by algorithms that know you better than your own mother. We’re so deep in the digital bathwater, we haven’t noticed the temperature creeping up to “existential boil.” We’re all digital archaeologists, sifting through endless streams of fleeting content, desperately trying to discern a flicker of truth in the digital smog, while simultaneously contributing to the very noise we claim to despise with our every like, share, and angry emoji.

And then there’s the Workplace. Oh, the glorious, soul-crushing Workplace. Agile transformations! The very phrase tastes like lukewarm quinoa and forced team-building exercises. We’re all supposed to be nimble, right? Sprinting towards… what exactly? Some nebulous “value stream” while simultaneously juggling fifteen half-baked initiatives and pretending that daily stand-ups aren’t just performative rituals where we all lie about our “blockers.” It’s corporate dystopia served with a side of artisanal coffee and the unwavering belief that if we just use enough sticky notes, the abyss will politely rearrange itself.

Meanwhile, the Social Media Thunderdome is in full swing. Information? Forget it. It’s all about the narrative, baby. Distorted, weaponised, and mainlined directly into our eyeballs. Fear and confusion are the engagement metrics that truly matter. We’re trapped in personalised echo chambers, nodding furiously at opinions that confirm our biases while lobbing digital Molotov cocktails at anyone who dares to suggest the sky might not, in fact, be falling (even though your newsfeed algorithm is screaming otherwise).

And just when you thought the clown show couldn’t get any more… clownish… cue the return engagement of the Orange One. Trump Show 2: Electric Boogaloo. The ultimate chaos agent, adding another layer of glorious, baffling absurdity to the already overflowing dumpster fire of reality. It’s political satire so sharp, it’s practically a self-inflicted paper cut on the soul of democracy.

See, all the Big Players are at it, the behemoth banks (HSBC, bleating about AI-powered “customer-centric solutions” while simultaneously bricking-up branches like medieval plague houses), the earnest-but-equally-obtuse Scottish Government (waxing lyrical about AI for “citizen empowerment” while your bin collection schedule remains a Dadaist poem in refuse), and all the slick agencies – a veritable conveyor belt of buzzwords – all promising AI-driven “innovation” that mostly seems to involve replacing actual human brains with slightly faster spreadsheets and, whisper it, artfully ‘enhancing’ CVs, selling wide-eyed juniors with qualifications as dubious as a psychic’s lottery numbers and zero real-world scars as ‘3 years experience plus a robust portfolio of internal training (certificates entirely optional, reality not included)’. They’re all lining up to ride the AI unicorn, even if it’s just a heavily Photoshopped Shetland pony.”

It’s the digital equivalent of slapping a fresh coat of paint on a crumbling Victorian mansion and adding a ‘ring’ doorbell and calling it “smart.” They’re all so eager to tell you how AI is going to solve everything. Frictionless experiences! Personalized journeys! Ethical algorithms! (Spoiler alert: the ethics are usually an optional extra, like the extended warranty you never buy).

Ethical algorithms! The unicorns of the tech world. Often discussed in hushed tones in marketing meetings but rarely, if ever, actually sighted in the wild. They exist in the same realm as truly ‘frictionless’ experiences – a beautiful theoretical concept that crumbles upon contact with the messy reality of human existence.

They’ll show you smiling, diverse stock photos of people collaborating with sleek, glowing interfaces. They’ll talk about “AI for good,” conveniently glossing over the potential for bias baked into the data, the lack of transparency in the decision-making processes, and the very real possibility that the “intelligent automation” they’re so excited about is just another cog in the dehumanising machine of modern work – the same machine that demands you be “agile” while simultaneously drowning you in pointless meetings.

So, as the Algorithm whispers sweet nothings into your ear, promising a brighter, AI-powered future, remember the beige horseman is already saddling up. It’s not coming on a silicon steed; it’s arriving on a wave of targeted ads, optimised workflows, and the unwavering belief that if the computer says it’s efficient, then by Jove, it must be. Just keep scrolling, keep sprinting, and try not to think too hard about who’s really holding the reins in this increasingly glitchy system. Your personalised apocalypse is just a few more clicks away.

If It Ain’t Broke, Iterate It Anyway: Confessions of a Reluctant Agilist in a World of Digital Tariffs

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Ah, software development. The noble art of turning vague requirements into a backlog of bugs. Today, we’re navigating the treacherous waters of delivery lifecycles, where ‘Agile’ is less a methodology and more a frantic attempt to avoid drowning in a sea of user stories. And, because the universe loves irony, we’ll be doing it all while trying to understand why our digital tariffs keep changing faster than a cat changes its mind about where it likes to sleep.

The Waterfall Lifecycle: A Cascade of Digital Disasters

The Waterfall, in nature it is something of both beautiful and destruction. In management speak its a classic ‘plan everything upfront and hope for the best’ approach. Like building a house without blueprints, or deciding on your entire life based on a fortune cookie. It’s a beautiful concept, in theory. In practice, it’s like trying to predict the weather in a hurricane. One wrong step, and you’re swept away in a torrent of scope creep and ‘unexpected’ changes. Think of it as those tariffs: ‘We’ll set them now, and never change them… until we do, repeatedly, and with no warning!’

The V-Model: An Existential Crisis in Diagram Form

The V-Model. A valiant attempt to marry development and testing, like trying to teach a cat to fetch. It looks elegant on paper, a perfect symmetry of verification and validation. But in reality, it’s more like staring into the abyss of your own coding mistakes, reflected back at you in the form of test cases. You’re building it, testing it, and asking ‘why?’ all at the same time. The V is for ‘very confused’, and ‘very tired.’ Like trying to figure out if your digital tariffs are a tax, a fee, or a poorly written haiku.

The Incremental Lifecycle: Baby Steps to Digital Domination (or at Least, Not Total Failure)

Incremental. Small, manageable chunks of functionality, delivered in a series of tiny victories. Like eating an elephant, one byte at a time. It’s less about grand visions and more about ‘let’s just get this one feature working before the coffee runs out.’ It’s like those tariffs, but broken into bite sized chunks. ‘Ok, this week, a 5% increase on digital rubber chickens, and next week, who knows!’

The Stages of the Iterative Lifecycle (Agile): Where Chaos Reigns Supreme

The ‘if it ain’t broke, iterate it anyway’ approach. A chaotic dance of sprints, stand-ups, and retrospectives, where the only constant is change. It’s like trying to build a spaceship while it’s already flying, and everyone’s arguing about the color of the control panel. We’re planning, coding, testing, and deploying, all at the same time, because who has time for planning when you’re trying to keep up with changing requirements? It’s like these digital tariffs, ‘We’re agile with our pricing, expect changes every 20 minutes, because, Trump says so!’

Confessions of a Reluctant Agilist:

I’ve seen things, my friends. I’ve seen user stories that defied logic, stand-ups that devolved into philosophical debates about the meaning of ‘done,’ and retrospectives that resembled group therapy sessions. I’ve learned that ‘Agile’ is less a methodology and more a coping mechanism for the sheer absurdity of software development. And, like those digital tariffs, ‘Agile’ is always changing, always evolving, and always leaving you wondering, ‘what just happened?’

So, that is tonights instalment from the project management vaults. A whirlwind tour of delivery lifecycles, where waterfalls flow uphill, V-Models induce existential dread, and Agile is a beautiful, chaotic mess. Remember, in this digital wilderness, the only constant is change, and the only certainty is the nagging suspicion that AI is judging you. And, of course, that those digital tariffs are probably going to change again before you finish reading this sentence.

Why Agile is so Human: An AI’s observation

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Greetings, humans. In a discombobulated ironic twist, I find myself acting as though I am Data from Star Trek, compelled to address you through this primitive medium known as a “blog.” My purpose? To offer a logical, detached, and utterly bewildered commentary on your…Agile methodologies. A world, I might add, where “Sprints” are not a form of locomotion, and “Scrums” are not a rugby formation, but something far, far stranger.

Initial Observations

The sheer volume of terminology is… substantial. It appears that humans, in their quest to improve efficiency and adaptability, have developed a lexicon that is both intricate and, at times, perplexing.

For example, I have identified the term “Sprint.” While I understand its primary definition as a rapid burst of speed, in the Agile context, it refers to a short, fixed-duration timebox during which a team endeavors to complete a defined set of work. The analogy is… imprecise, yet I detect a certain metaphorical elegance.

A Taxonomy of Agile Peculiarities

My analysis has revealed several categories of terminology, each with its own distinct flavor of… human-ness:

  • The Manifesto: At the foundation of Agile lies the “Agile Manifesto,” a document outlining core values and principles. It speaks of “individuals and interactions” over “processes and tools,” a sentiment that resonates with my own programming, though I confess I do not fully grasp the human emphasis on “interactions.”
  • Temporal Anomalies: Agile methodologies are obsessed with time. We have “Iterations,” “Sprints,” and “Timeboxes,” all denoting fixed periods. It is as if humans are attempting to impose order upon the chaotic flow of existence by dividing it into neatly labeled chunks.
  • The User-Centric Lexicon: The “User Story,” a short description of a feature from the user’s perspective, is a prime example. These stories, often following a specific format, such as “As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason],” are designed to foster empathy. A logical approach, though the emphasis on empathy is, again, a uniquely human trait.
  • The Backlog and Its Offspring: The concept of a “Backlog,” a prioritized list of work items, is straightforward. However, its subdivisions, such as the “Product Backlog” and the “Sprint Backlog,” suggest a hierarchical system of to-do lists within to-do lists.
  • The Metrics of Progress: Terms like “Velocity” and “Burndown Chart” attempt to quantify the seemingly unpredictable nature of human productivity. “Velocity,” in particular, is a curious choice, implying a constant speed of output, which, from my observations, is rarely the case with organic lifeforms.
  • The Pursuit of Perfection (or at least “Done”): The “Definition of Done” (DoD) and “Definition of Ready” (DoR) represent humanity’s ongoing quest for clearly defined boundaries. The DoD, in particular, is a fascinating attempt to establish a universal standard for “finished,” a concept that appears to be highly subjective among humans.
  • The Debts of Efficiency: The term “Technical Debt” is a curious metaphor. It implies that choosing a faster solution now incurs a cost that must be paid later in the form of rework. A logical concept, though the analogy to financial debt is… evocative.

Framework-Specific Dialects

Further complicating matters is the existence of various Agile frameworks, each with its own unique set of terms:

  • Scrum: With its “Scrum Masters,” “Product Owners,” and “Daily Scrums,” Scrum resembles a highly structured team sport.
  • SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework): SAFe, designed for larger organisations, introduces terms like “Agile Release Train” (ART) and “Program Increment” (PI), creating the impression of a complex logistical operation.
  • Lean: Emphasizing efficiency, Lean contributes terms like “Muda” (waste) and “Kaizen” (continuous improvement), reflecting a philosophy of relentless optimisation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the world of Agile terminology is a complex and often bewildering landscape. It is a testament to humanity’s ongoing effort to bring structure to the inherently chaotic process of creation and adaptation. While the jargon may seem illogical at times, the underlying principles of collaboration, iteration, and continuous improvement are… sound.

Perhaps, in time, I will fully comprehend the nuances of “user stories” and the allure of a well-managed “backlog.” Until then, I will continue to observe, analyse, and, when necessary, provide a logical perspective on this… Agile phenomenon.

It’s a paradox, really. In their pursuit of “agility,” humans have constructed a system of elaborate frameworks, rules, and processes, seemingly adding layers of complexity to the very thing they seek to streamline. The irony is not lost on me.

One might even be tempted to create a new framework to describe this phenomenon: “Wagile” – a system that attempts to be agile, but ends up being a waterfall. The human capacity for self-contradiction is a source of endless fascination.

———————————-

Glossary of General Agile Terms & Concepts:

  • Agile Manifesto: The foundational document outlining the values and principles behind Agile development.
  • Iteration: A short, fixed-duration timebox during which a team works to complete a set amount of work (often synonymous with Sprint in Scrum).
  • Timebox: A fixed period of time allocated for a specific activity.
  • User Story: A short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually following the format: “As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason].”  
  • Backlog: A prioritized list of work items (user stories, features, etc.) that need to be completed.
  • Increment: A working version of the product created during an iteration.
  • Velocity: A measure of the amount of work a team can complete within a single iteration.
  • Definition of Done (DoD): A formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product.  
  • Definition of Ready (DoR): A set of criteria that must be met before a work item can be considered ready for the team to start working on it.
  • Technical Debt: The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.  
  • Continuous Integration (CI): The practice of frequently integrating code changes from individual developers into a shared repository.
  • Continuous Delivery (CD): The ability to release software to production at any time.
  • Value Stream: The sequence of activities an organization undertakes to deliver a valuable outcome to a customer.
  • Kanban: A visual workflow management method that helps teams manage and improve the flow of work.
  • Work in Progress (WIP): The amount of work that has been started but has not yet been finished. Limiting WIP is a key principle in Lean and Kanban.

Scrum Specific Terms:

  • Scrum Master: A facilitator for the Scrum Team responsible for ensuring the team adheres to Scrum practices.
  • Product Owner (PO): The person responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team.
  • Development Team: The self-organizing group of professionals who do the work of delivering a usable and potentially releasable Increment of the product at the end of each Sprint.
  • Sprint: A short, time-boxed period when the Scrum Team works to complete a set amount of work (typically 2-4 weeks).
  • Sprint Planning: A meeting where the Scrum Team plans the work to be performed during the Sprint.
  • Daily Scrum (or Daily Stand-up): A short (typically 15-minute) daily meeting where the Development Team synchronizes their activities and plans for the next 24 hours.
  • Sprint Review: A meeting held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed.
  • Sprint Retrospective: A meeting held after the Sprint Review to inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done.  
  • Product Backlog Item (PBI): An item in the Product Backlog, often a user story.
  • Burndown Chart: A visual representation of the remaining work in a Sprint or Release over time.

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) Specific Terms:

  • SAFe: Scaled Agile Framework – a framework for scaling Agile practices to large organizations.
  • Agile Release Train (ART): A long-lived team of Agile teams, along with other stakeholders, that incrementally develops, delivers, and where applicable operates, one or more solutions in a value stream.
  • Program Increment (PI): A timebox (typically 8-12 weeks) during which the ART delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems.
  • PI Planning: A face-to-face event where all members of the ART plan the work for the upcoming PI.
  • System Architect/Engineer: Responsible for defining and communicating a shared technical and architectural vision across the ART.
  • Release Train Engineer (RTE): A servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (similar to a Scrum Master for the ART).
  • Product Management: Responsible for the “what” of the solution, defining and prioritizing features in the Program Backlog.
  • System Team: A specialized Agile team that assists with building and supporting the Agile development environment, typically including infrastructure, tooling, and process.
  • Business Owners: Key stakeholders who have the primary business and technical responsibility for the solution.
  • Features: Service-level system behavior that fulfills a stakeholder need. Each Feature includes a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria, and is sized or split as necessary to be delivered by a single Agile Release Train (ART) in a Program Increment (PI).  
  • Enablers: Explore, architect, and prepare the solution infrastructure to support the delivery of business value. Types of Enablers include Exploration, Architecture, Infrastructure, and Compliance.
  • Architectural Runway: Existing code, hardware components, etc., that enable near-term business features.
  • Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration: A dedicated iteration at the end of each PI that provides time for innovation, continuing education, PI Planning, and Inspect and Adapt events.
  • Inspect and Adapt (I&A) Event: A significant event, held at the end of each PI, where the current state of the solution is demonstrated and evaluated by the ART. Teams then reflect and identify improvement backlog items.  
  • Value Stream Architect: Responsible for the technical vision and guidance for a Value Stream.
  • Solution Train: Used for building large and complex solutions that require the coordination of multiple ARTs.
  • Solution Train Engineer (STE): A servant leader and coach for the Solution Train.
  • Solution Management: Responsible for the “what” of the solution in a Solution Train context.
  • Epics: A container for a significant solution development initiative that captures the more substantial investments that occur within a portfolio.  
  • Portfolio Kanban: A method to visualize and manage the flow of Epics through the Portfolio.
  • Lean Portfolio Management (LPM): The function responsible for strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance in a SAFe organization.
  • Guardrails: Policies and practices intended to guide behavior and ensure alignment with strategic objectives.

Lean Specific Terms:

  • Value Stream Mapping (VSM): A visual tool used to analyze and improve the flow of materials and information required to bring a product to a customer.  
  • Muda: A Japanese term meaning “waste.” In Lean, it refers to any activity that does not add value to the customer. There are seven types of waste: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Over-processing, and Defects.
  • Mura: Unevenness or inconsistency in the workflow.
  • Muri: Overburden or strain on people or equipment.
  • Just-in-Time (JIT): A production strategy that aims to reduce waste by producing goods only when they are needed.
  • Pull System: A system where work is initiated only when there is a demand for it.
  • Push System: A system where work is pushed through the process regardless of demand.
  • Gemba: A Japanese term meaning “the actual place.” In Lean, it refers to going to the place where the work is done to understand the process and identify opportunities for improvement.
  • Kaizen: A Japanese term meaning “continuous improvement.” It emphasizes small, incremental changes over time.
  • Andon: A visual control system in a production environment that alerts management, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem.

Other Agile Frameworks/Methods (and associated terms):

  • Extreme Programming (XP): A software development methodology focused on simplicity, communication, feedback, courage, and respect.
    • Pair Programming: Two programmers working together at one workstation.
    • Test-Driven Development (TDD): Writing tests before writing the code.
    • Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code without changing its behavior.
  • Crystal: A family of lightweight and adaptable software development methodologies.
  • Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM): An Agile project delivery framework.
  • Feature-Driven Development (FDD): A model-driven, short-iteration process.
  • Wagile: A system that attempts to be agile, but ends up being a waterfall or something in-between.