An Agile Glossary

A quick, jargon-free guide to the words people throw around in project delivery and what they actually mean in plain English.

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Agile: Not a magic framework. It’s simply an approach to work that focuses on small steps, regular feedback, and making sensible changes as you go.
Agile Release Train (ART): A SAFe term for a large group of teams (usually 50+ people) working together towards a shared goal. Think of it as a heavy train made up of multiple carriages.
Alpha: The testing phase in government project delivery. It’s where you build small, rough prototypes to test your ideas with real users and learn tons before building something for real.

Backlog: A prioritised list of things that need doing. That’s it. It’s a fancy word for a sensible to-do list.
Beta: The phase where you build a working version of your service for real users to try out, tweaking and fixing things based on what happens.
Blocker (or Impediment): Anything standing in the way of getting a task done. A good team makes blockers visible so they can clear them quickly.
Burndown chart: A simple line graph that shows how much work is left versus how much time you have left to do it.

Cadence: The regular rhythm or routine of a team, like having a quick sync every morning or a review every two weeks.
Ceremonies: A formal word for regular team meetings (like stand-ups, retrospectives, or planning sessions).
Continuous delivery: The habit of releasing small updates or changes regularly, rather than waiting months to launch everything in one massive "big bang."

Daily stand-up: A short, usually-15-minute daily check-in where the team shares what they did yesterday, what they’re doing today, and if anything is blocking them.
Definition of Done (DoD): A clear, agreed list of checks a task must pass before the team agrees it’s genuinely finished.
Definition of Ready (DoR): The criteria a task needs to meet before a team feels confident enough to start working on it.
Delivery Manager (DM): The person whose job it is to remove obstacles, keep the team focused, and create the calm environment people need to do their best work.
Discovery: The initial research phase of a project. Before you build anything, you spend time understanding the actual problem and who you're solving it for.

Epic: A chunk of work that is too big to complete in one go. You break an Epic down into smaller, manageable tasks.

Feature: A specific capability or piece of functionality that delivers value to the person using your product or service.
Feedback: In this context, the process of showing your work early, seeing how people react or use it, and using that information to make it better.

GDS Service Standard: The 14-point benchmark set by the Government Digital Service to ensure public sector digital services are accessible, secure, and easy to use.
Governance: The way decisions and sign-offs are handled. In agile, governance should be continuous and open, rather than a massive surprise inspection at the end.

Iteration: Working in short cycles where you build something, test it, learn from it, and improve it in the next cycle.
Iterative development: Building a service step-by-step in small pieces, rather than trying to build the entire final product in secret.

Kanban: A visual way of managing work that focuses on keeping tasks moving smoothly from "To Do" to "Done."
Kanban Board: A board split into columns (like To Do, Doing, Done) that gives everyone an instant view of what work is happening right now.

Lean: An approach borrowed from manufacturing focused on cutting out waste, dropping unnecessary bureaucracy, and delivering value as efficiently as possible.
Live: The final phase of service delivery where the product is fully launched, actively maintained, and continuously improved.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The simplest usable version of a product you can build to start delivering value and learning from real users immediately.

PI Planning (Program Increment Planning): A two-day planning event used in SAFe where multiple teams meet to map out the next 8–12 weeks of work together.
Product Backlog: The master list of all the features, fixes, and ideas planned for a product, kept in priority order.
Product Manager (or Product Owner): The person who owns the vision for the product. They decide what needs to be built and in what order, based on user needs.

Refinement: A meeting where the team looks at upcoming tasks on the backlog, clarifies the details, and breaks them down into smaller pieces.
Retrospective (Retro): A regular session where the team stops to ask: What went well? What didn't? What should we tweak next time?
Roadmap: A high-level visual guide showing where a product or service is heading over time, focusing on outcomes rather than rigid dates.

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework): A heavy, highly structured system designed to help huge corporations run agile across dozens of teams at once.
Scrum: A popular agile framework where teams work in fixed time blocks (usually 2 weeks) to deliver small chunks of work.
Scrum Master: Someone who coaches the team on Scrum practices, helps run meetings, and removes day-to-day blockers.
Show and Tell (Demo): An informal session where the team shows real, working progress to stakeholders and gets immediate feedback.
Silo: Working in isolation without sharing information or collaborating with other teams or departments.
Spike: A short, time-boxed research task used to answer a question or test an idea before committing to a larger piece of work.
Sprint: A fixed block of time (typically 1 to 2 weeks) where a team focuses on completing a specific set of tasks.
Sprint Planning: A meeting at the start of a sprint where the team agrees on what they can realistically achieve over the next week or two.
Story Points: An arbitrary unit of measurement used by some teams to estimate the relative effort or complexity of a task, rather than estimating in hours.

Timebox: A strict, agreed limit on how much time you will spend on a task or meeting before stopping, preventing things from dragging on forever.
Trello / Jira: Popular digital software tools used by teams to create virtual task boards and manage backlogs.

User-Centred Design (UCD): Designing services around the real needs of the people using them, rather than the internal preferences of the organisation.
User Story: A short, plain-English description of a feature written from the perspective of the user (e.g., "As a... I want to... So that...").

Velocity: A measure of how much work a team typically completes during a single sprint. Useful for rough forecasting, not for judging performance.
Visual Management Board: Any physical or digital board used to bring work out of inboxes and make progress visible to everyone.

WIP Limits (Work in Progress Limits): Setting a maximum cap on how many tasks a team can work on at one time. It forces people to finish old tasks before starting new ones.