What Do You Mean When You Say ...?

Or “Do you have a cheat sheet for all this new terminology?

Often as we start out moving to Agile and to SAFe, there is confusion caused by the fact that there is a lot of new terminology. The fact that there is new terminology is not a surprise - all sub-cultures have their own terminology - but it can make things difficult when you are trying to work with a group that is changing.

There are a number of glossaries out there and you should reference those for further information. This cheat sheet is just aimed at getting some of the most basic terms defined in the situation where we are working to a multi-team agile (SAFe) implementation.

Unit of Execution	Focus	Work Unit	Planning Horizon	Named Roles	Events	Artifacts
Team Cross functional, 5-11 people	Technical delivery	(User) Stories	Iteration (or Sprint) 2 weeks period	Product Owner (PO) ”What” the team works Scrum Master (SM) ”How“ the team works Agile Team Implements the stories	Iteration Planning Plan and commit Daily Standup (DSU) Execute to meet commitments Iteration Review Demo of working stories Iteration Retrospective Process improvement	Team Backlog Prioritized requirements Scrum or Kanban Board Visualize/manage work Team Definition of Done Consistent quality definition
Agile Release Train (ART) Multiple teams, 50-125 people	Customer value	Features	Program Increment (PI) 8-12 weeks period	Product Manager (PM) “Uber” Product Owner Release Train Engineer (RTE) “Uber” Scrum Master System Architect (SA) Enable multi-team execution	PI Planning Plan and commit ART Sync Execute to meet commitments System Demo Demo of working features Inspect and Adapt (I&A) Process improvement	Program Backlog Prioritized requirements Program Kanban Visualize/manage value delivery System Definition of Done Consistent quality definition