Table 1.
Agile Glossary
| Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Agile | Similar to Six Sigma or Lean, Agile is a development methodology originally devised in the software industry. Agile is a group of development methodologies in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams. Agile emphasizes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. |
| Story | A statement that summarizes the work that must be performed to deliver a specific function. Stories are the basis for communication, planning, and describing requirements. Typically stories capture the who, what, and why in a simple and concise way. Example: instead of receiving unlabeled samples, as an extraction technician, I want appropriately labeled samples for extraction, shearing, and storage. |
| Task | Description of the actual work needed to complete a story; typically several tasks per story. Each team member owns at least one task (including test, inspection, and/or verification of the task). |
| Backlog | A collection of stories and tasks the team will work on at some point in the future (the to-do list).∗ |
| Epic (module)† | Very large story or sets of stories that can be broken down into smaller stories; typically applied for components in which full elaboration has been deferred until actually needed. We applied the term module instead of epic to emphasize interchangeability in the workflow. |
| Scrum | One of the most widely recognized Agile development frameworks. Scrum consists of a series of short iterations (sprints), each of which ends with the delivery of a valuable increment and review of the iteration (sprint review). |
| Sprint | Defined here as ultra-short, one-on-one meetings that determine workflow and tasks for each self-organizing team to deliver the next most valuable component (iterative delivery process). |
∗
An excerpt of our current backlog is provided in Supplemental Table S4.
†
The term module is not part of the original Agile terminology; however, as stated above, we applied the term module to emphasize the interchangeability of the eight functionally distinct workflow components (Figure 2).