The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product/service being built. The Product Owner owns the decisions related to funds, works with the stakeholders and steers the direction of the product to optimize the outcomes and impact for the customers.

Sprint Goal is the single (overarching) objective for the Sprint, achieved through the Increment. Sprint Goal communicates why the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders, creates coherence and focus. Collaboratively defined by the Scrum Team during Sprint Planning. Although the Sprint Goal is a commitment by the Developers, it provides flexibility in terms of the exact work needed to achieve it. The progress toward the Sprint Goal is inspected on daily basis during the Daily Scrum. If the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete, the Sprint could be cancelled.

Blocker is anything that blocks the team from making progress. Please also see Impediment .

A complex system is a collection of interdependent parts, modules, and/or variables. A perfect understanding of individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behaviour. The state of a complex system can't be predicted due to the reason that it's parts dynamically change and every change influences the state of other parts and the overall system. Is your work environment Obvious, Complicated, Complex or Chaotic? Please analyze your current work environment, and identify which of these variables change in your work environment? Customer Needs Technology Talent/People Competition Organizational Goals Marketplace Government Regulation All of the Above If you answered All of the above (or many of the above) your work environment is Complex.

LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) is a framework focused on applying the principles, elements, and purpose of Scrum in a large-scale context. Less is Scrum applied to multiple teams building a large product. Like Scrum, LeSS hits the sweet spot between defined concrete elements and empirical process control. LeSS offers: . Principles: The LeSS principles provide the basis to find answers as to how best to apply LeSS in your specific context. . Less Rules: Less rules define what is LeSS (and what isn’t) and they provide a concrete framework for applying LeSS. . Guides: Guides are tips and recommendations for adopting LeSS. . Experiments: Hundreds of tried experiments that a team can pick and choose from to try in their context. Introduction to LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) - Shana: Less Complete Picture by Micheal James , Certified LeSS Trainer:

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal prospect (or customer) based on market research and actual data about your present customers. It includes demographic data, behavior patterns, motivations, life-style, behaviors, pain points and objectives. Customer personas are used to segment your customers into groups, identify their different needs, and tailor your product features or service to each group. Organizations create customer personas for their product / business to make their offering relevant to their customer needs.

Developers are cross-functionally skilled people in the Scrum Team who contribute to develop a usable Increment each Sprint. The Developers are accountable for: Planning the Sprint work; Execution and adapting their plan each day toward the Sprint Goal; Creating a quality Increment that adhers to their Definition of Done; Holding each other accountable as professionals.

Technical debt is the incomplete work that must be addressed to bring the product to the expected quality and functionality. Technical Debt could be intentional as well as unintentional. Intentional Tech Debt is a result of decisions made during product development that emphasize speed over the product quality. When developers are rushed, they may cut corners and pay less attention to quality - the resulting product may have incomplete work / activities. For example: lack of refactoring, not fixing known issues / defects, incomplete or ignored unit testing, etc. Unintentional Tech Debt is a result of slopiness, lack of technical competence, bad design decisions, etc. Having Technical Debt lowers the User Experience and also increase the cost of ownership. Also see: Living Without Tech Debt

Lead Time is the time it takes from identifying a need (could be a customer problem, feature request, defect raised, technical enhancement etc.) to making a solution available to customers. Having a shorter the lead time equates to more responsiveness. To reduce the lead time in Scrum: a) a shorter sprint duration is recommended, b) work (PBIs) is divided in smaller slices, c) an emergent product backlog is used, d) a Work-In-Progress (WIP) limit is used during Sprint execution A Self-Managing and Cross-Functional Scrum Team further improves the ability to improve the rate of value delivery hence a shorter Lead Time.

The practice of Collective Ownership of a Product / Code / Solution means the entire team collectively owns building of the solution / product and that every member has a responsibility to contribute to it. It taps in to collective intelligence of the team members and reduces risk. In Scrum the developers have collective ownership of the product being built.

An Impediment is anything that prevents a team from moving forward, and from getting work Done. Also knowns as a Blocker. Impediments add delay and overprocessing (form of waste) to a team's work. Impediments could be intra team, inter team and organizational. Impediments can be effectively addressed when team members facing an impediments quickly announce it and create transparency about it.

Forecast is selecting how much work can be completed within a Sprint. Developers use empirical information to forecast their Sprint scope during Sprint Planning. Forecast is not a guarantee. Also see: Sprint Planning

When a Product Backlog Item meets the Definition of Done an Increment is recognized as Done. See more: Definition of Done

Kaizen is a Japanese terms referring to incrementally achieving excellence through the relentless and endless pursuit of perfection. In a business context Kaizen is continuous improvement of processes, operations and functions involving all employees. Kaizen is Change for the Better . Also see: Lean Thinking , Lean Waste , A3 Problem Solving , Lean Product Development , Value Stream Mapping .

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to solving complex problems. Design Thinking consists of five key steps to creating better solutions: Emphathize: Understand needs of the end user Define: Define end user / customer persona(s) Ideate: Brainstorm ideas, narrow down possible solutions Prototype: A visual-interactive mock-up of an idea, created to test an early stage idea, and gather user's feedback. Test: Invite feedback, insights and analyze the effectiveness of the chosen prototype.

A Scrum team needs access to shared information in order to effectively perform its activities and Inspect the information. Scrum Artifacts are designed to maximize transparency of key information. Thus, everyone inspecting them has the same basis for adaptation. The three Scrum Artifacts represent work or value: Product Backlog Sprint Backlog Increment Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured.

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Product Owner

Sprint Goal

Blocker

Complex System

LeSS Framework

Customer Persona

Developers

Technical Debt

Lead Time

Collective Ownership

Impediment

Forecast

Done

Kaizen

Design Thinking

Scrum Artifacts