Easy everything in Agile & Scrum, page 6
Kanban Board: Visualize Your Workflow
A Kanban board is a visual system for managing work as it moves through a process, making bottlenecks obvious. It's used in software development to track features from 'To Do' to 'Done'.
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Kanban: A Strategy for Optimizing Flow
Kanban isn't just a board with columns; it's a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through your process. It helps teams visualize work, manage bottlenecks, and deliver value predictably.
Lean Canvas: A Startup's Reality Check on a Page
A Lean Canvas is a one-page business plan that forces you to define and test your riskiest assumptions first. Startups use it to validate their core idea before building. The biggest mistake is treating it as a one-time exercise instead of a living document.
Value Proposition Canvas: Map Customer Needs to Product Features
The Value Proposition Canvas maps customer needs to product features to ensure you're building something people want. It connects customer "jobs," "pains," and "gains" to your product's features.
Empathy Mapping: Seeing Through Your User's Eyes
An empathy map is a tool for a team to build a shared picture of a user's mind, not just their actions. It's used in UX design to align on user needs before building. The footgun is treating it as a one-time checklist instead of.
The Test Pyramid: Fast Feedback, Stable Code
The Test Pyramid is a strategy for balancing automated tests: write many fast unit tests, fewer integration tests, and very few slow end-to-end tests. It guides CI/CD pipelines to catch failures quickly. The footgun is over-relying on slow E2E tests.
DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself
DRY means every piece of knowledge has one single, authoritative representation in your system. This applies to business logic, config, or docs; a change in one place updates everywhere.
YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It
YAGNI is a principle of radical simplicity: don't build features now just because you *think* you'll need them later. It forces focus on current requirements, preventing wasted effort on speculative work.
Simple Design: The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work
Simple Design means building only what's needed now, not what you might need later. In agile projects like Extreme Programming, this keeps code lean for changing requirements.
Start, Stop, Continue: A Simple Action-Oriented Retrospective
This retrospective turns feedback into action by asking what to start, stop, and continue doing. Teams use it after a sprint to improve processes and collaboration. The footgun: the 'Continue' list can become a long praise session, losing focus on improvement.
Retrospective Prime Directive: Assume Positive Intent
Assume everyone acted with the best intentions given their context. The Retrospective Prime Directive creates psychological safety for a blameless discussion, focusing on systemic issues, not individual fault.
PDCA Cycle: The Scientific Method for Business Improvement
The PDCA cycle is the scientific method for business: Plan a change, Do the experiment, Check the results, and Act on the findings. It's used to refine manufacturing or improve software cycles.
Timeboxing: Fix the Time, Flex the Scope
Timeboxing fixes the duration for a task, not the scope. You work for a set period and then stop, forcing focus and preventing endless work. It's the core of Agile sprints and daily stand-ups. The footgun is treating it as a hard deadline to cram.
Information Radiator: Your Team's Public Billboard
An information radiator is a large, public display that broadcasts key project info to anyone walking by. It's used for build statuses or task boards to keep the team aligned without meetings. The footgun is cluttering it until it becomes ignorable noise.
INVEST: The Checklist for High-Quality User Stories
INVEST is a checklist for quality user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. Use it in backlog grooming to ensure work is clear and sprint-ready.
Epic: The Agile Placeholder for Big Ideas
An Epic is a large user story that's too big for a single sprint, acting as a placeholder for a major feature. Use it to group related stories for features like 'user profile management.'
Burndown Chart: A Project's Fuel Gauge
A burndown chart is a project's fuel gauge, showing work left versus time. Scrum teams use it to track sprint progress and predict completion. The footgun is treating it as a performance report instead of a conversation starter about blockers.
Planning Poker: Avoid Groupthink in Estimates
Planning poker avoids groupthink in effort estimation. Team members reveal estimates simultaneously using cards, preventing the first number spoken from anchoring everyone else. It's used in Agile to size up tasks.
Technical Debt: The Hidden Cost of Shipping Fast
Technical debt is like a loan on your codebase: you ship faster now by taking a shortcut, but pay 'interest' later as slower development. It's often a choice to meet a deadline. The footgun is thinking all debt is bad; strategic debt is fine if.
Servant Leadership: Serve First, Lead Second
A servant-leader inverts the power pyramid, focusing on their team's growth over their own power. This is common in Agile, where scrum masters remove blockers to help developers perform at their best.
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