Select a letter to view words beginning with that letter.

A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z

A

• agile team: a cross-functional group of individuals who together have skills necessary to define, build, test, and document increments of value in a short time. Agile teams use sprints as the cadence for their development practices.
• anchor sprint: dates within a program increment used to provide milestones for coordinating across teams, for example, for negotiating a dependency. Anchor sprints allow all teams to work on the same cadence. Once anchor sprints are in place, the actual sprints can be created for individual teams allowing all teams working in a program increment to deliver using the same schedule.

B

• backlog: a place to stack, rank, and assign work items across teams, sprints, and program increments.

C

• capability: a work item similar to features, but which describes higher-level solution behaviors than features. Capabilities fit within a single program increment to assure that incremental and measurable value is continuously delivered.
• child: in a hierarchy, referring to items that are directly associated in a lower level.

D

• daily standup: a live team meeting to manage the daily synchronization of work and to align teams.
• dependency: a service or component that a team needs to deliver functionality, but cannot create for themselves.

E

• epic: a large, typically crosscutting, customer-facing initiative that includes new development necessary to realize certain business benefits.
• estimation: the process of predicting the most realistic amount of effort required to develop or maintain software based on the incomplete and uncertain input. Jira Align supports four different methods for estimating epics, capabilities, and features. These estimation methods are Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), T-shirt size, points, and team weeks/member weeks.

F

• feature: a group of user stories that represents functionality customers will use. Multiple stories are typically assigned to a feature, and a feature fits within a single PI.
• FTE: full-time equivalent, employee, and/or engineer.

I

• impediment: anything that impedes or can impede the team delivery. There are two types of impediments: a story impediment that blocks a certain story, and a team impediment that blocks a certain team.

K

• kanban board: a card system for regulating the sequence of work that is used to visualize the workflow.
• kanban team: a delivery team type that doesn't use sprint timeboxes as part of their development practices. Instead, work is developed and released continuously. The team meets regularly to set priorities, and the next top-ranked item is pulled into development as soon as the current work is done. Larger program increment containers are still used to coordinate development with Agile teams that use scrum or other sprint-based methodologies.
• key result: a simple metric that outlines success for an objective. Key results should be outcome-driven, as opposed to a checklist of things to do.

L

• long-term goal: the intended goals over several years. Long-term goals answer the question “How will we succeed long-term?”
• long-term strategy: the actions, behaviors, and plans over several years to achieve long-term goals. Long-term strategies answer the question “What is our approach to achieving long-term success?”

M

• mission: the most important aim of an organization. A mission answers the question “Why do we exist?”

N

• north star: the single measurable goal the organization needs to align to.

O

• objective: high-level goals that teams, programs, solutions and portfolios achieve through the delivery of work.
• OKR: objectives and key results.

P

• parent: in a hierarchy, referring to items that are directly associated in an upper level.
• portfolio: a distinct line of business that includes its own organizational structure with its own executives, product management, and development teams. Many organizations will only have one portfolio, but larger organizations may have several portfolios, for example, in the case where companies are acquired by a parent company.
• program: a set of product management and development teams that work from a shared backlog and coordinate team of teams meetings. Teams within a program usually only work on products and projects for their own program, though occasionally might coordinate work with other programs. Also called a release train in the Scaled Agile Framework.
• program board: an agreement between product management and the development teams on what functionality will be delivered at various points of the upcoming or current PI. The program board is a "living document" with the ability to move features, dependencies, and objectives between sprints.
• program increment (PI): a standard, often quarterly planning cycle for releases of software to the end users.

R

• release vehicle: an actual release to market or to internal end users of software.
• risk: influencing factors that can adversely affect the outcome of your delivery. Tracking risks helps improve team visibility and drive mitigation. Risks are typically owned and managed by Product Managers and Release Train Engineers (RTEs).
• roadmap: a visual representation of how work items line up against each other in their current program increment and how they are linked together. Roadmaps offer a holistic view of your PIs and the ability to manage the objects within the PI, for example, change the begin and end dates or set the health.
• room: a control panel for the scope of work that is selected. Rooms are dashboards to manage and get updates for your work and serve as an entry point into your work. Examples of rooms include the Strategy Room, Portfolio Room, Program Room, and Team Room.

S

• solution: a team structure used to group programs when a multi-program consolidated view is required routinely. For example, if you need to report on Business and Consumer Enablers as a consolidated program, then you may create a solution Enablers that is a program of both.
• sprint: smaller timeboxes used for an incremental delivery cycle, usually spanning from one to four weeks.
• story: a small, incremental piece of functionality that captures what a user needs and why. Stories fit within a single sprint.
• strategic goal (goal): an item representing the desired outcomes that the entire organization wants to achieve.
• strategic snapshot: large timeboxes used to develop an organization's strategy by month, quarter, or year from the top down or from the bottom up.

T

• task: work the team must complete to accept a story as done.
• theme: a long-term initiative intended to ultimately differentiate an enterprise from its competitors. Themes connect the portfolio vision to the enterprise business strategy.

V

• value: the principles an organization follows in achieving the set goals. Values answer the question “How do we behave?”
• vision: the manner in which an organization sees its work. Visions answer the question “What value do we provide?”

W

• work item: an object representing work in Jira Align.

Y

• yearly goal: the goals an organization sets and aims to achieve that continue throughout a calendar or fiscal year. Yearly goals answer the question “How will we succeed this year?”