Glossary

Terms are in alphabetical order. Each one links to the page where it matters most.

Availability

The share of time a service works for its users, measured against its service level objective. See Platform Health.

Backlog

The ordered list of work for a team. The Product Owner orders it. See Refine the backlog.

Business Executive

A senior business leader who sponsors ideas in Discovery and signs off the plan at Quarterly Planning. Not a Product Operations role. See Discovery.

Capacity plan

How many team-sprints each Home Team has for the quarter, split into the Run allowance, the Discretionary share and project work. See Plan resources and capacity.

Change

Work that makes something new or better: strategic projects delivered by cross-functional project teams, plus Discretionary work delivered by static Home Teams. See The value delivery system.

Cut line

The point in the ranked portfolio list where planned work reaches the capacity forecast. Ideas above it pass Gate 2. See Prioritize the portfolio.

Daily scrum

A 15-minute daily meeting where the Developers plan the day towards the sprint goal. See Run the daily scrum.

Definition of Done

The checks every item must pass before it counts as done and can be shown at the sprint review. See Scrum at Pecos Mutual.

Definition of Ready

The checks a backlog item must pass before it can go into a sprint. See Scrum at Pecos Mutual.

Delivery

The third stage of the Change lifecycle, where the project team practices Scrum to deliver the project. See Scrum at Pecos Mutual.

Dependency board

The board used at Quarterly Planning to show every cross-team dependency by sprint, agreed by both teams. See Run the Quarterly Planning session.

Developers

Everyone on a Scrum team who builds, tests and releases the work, whatever their job title. See Scrum at Pecos Mutual.

Discovery

The first stage of the Change lifecycle: high-level ideation, estimation and prioritization, where Business Executives work with Product Managers. See Discovery.

Discretionary work

Smaller, ongoing change that one Home Team can deliver alone, of size S or smaller, needing no new budget. It goes through a light intake into the Home Team's backlog. See Run, Change and Discretionary work.

Error budget

The amount of unreliability an SLO allows in a month. A 99.9% SLO allows about 43 minutes of downtime. When the budget is used up, reliability work goes first. See Platform Health.

Gate 1: Idea accepted

The intake decision that a business case is worth a design and an estimate. See Take in an idea.

Gate 2: Ready for planning

The decision that a project has a reviewed design, a size of L or smaller and a ranking above the cut line, so it moves to Planning. See Prioritize the portfolio.

Home Team

A static team that owns a set of platforms and a business area for the long term. It handles that area's Run work and delivers its Discretionary work. See Run, Change and Discretionary work.

Incident

Any unplanned interruption to a service, or a drop in its quality. See Incident Management.

Incident commander

The person who coordinates a Sev 1 or Sev 2 response, from a trained rota. They coordinate; they don't fix. See Triage and declare an incident.

Incident Management

The Run practice of detecting, declaring, resolving and learning from incidents. See Incident Management.

Milestone

A working, demonstrable step towards a goal, with a testable "done when" and a target sprint. See Set goals and milestones.

Milestone plan

A project's goals, milestones, dependencies and risks for one quarter. See the milestone plan template.

MTTR (mean time to restore)

The average time from the start of an incident to service being restored. See Platform Health.

One-page business case

The one-page summary of a strategic idea's problem, outcome and measures, used at idea intake. See the business case template.

Planning

The second stage of the Change lifecycle, where resource management and planning turn prioritized projects into goals and milestones for delivery within about 3 months. See Planning.

Platform Health

The Run practice of measuring and looking after each platform's reliability, performance, security and cost. See Platform Health.

Post-incident review

A blameless review held within 5 working days of a Sev 1 or Sev 2 incident, ending in tracked actions. See Run a post-incident review.

Product Manager

Decides what is worth building and why, and owns the health of their platforms. See the Product Manager guide.

Product Owner

Owns a team's backlog and the value each sprint delivers. See the Product Owner guide.

Program Manager

Looks across the portfolio, leads capacity planning and runs Quarterly Planning. See the Program Manager guide.

Project Manager

Keeps one strategic project on its path through its milestone plan, risks and dependencies. See the Project Manager guide.

Project team

A cross-functional team formed from Home Team members to deliver one strategic project. See Plan resources and capacity.

Quarterly Planning

The one-day session in the last week before each quarter, where teams confirm their plans and Business Executives sign them off. See Run the Quarterly Planning session.

Run

Run-the-business work done by teams through Incident Management and Platform Health. See The value delivery system.

Run allowance

The share of a Home Team's capacity set aside for Run work before any is committed to Change. Our default is 20%. See Plan resources and capacity.

Scrum Master

Coaches a team in Scrum, facilitates its events and clears impediments. See the Scrum Master guide.

Severity (Sev 1 to Sev 4)

How serious an incident is, from Sev 1 (critical: a core service down, or data at risk) to Sev 4 (low: no real effect on users yet). See the severity table.

SLO (service level objective)

The availability or performance target for a service, such as 99.9% availability. See Platform Health.

Sprint

A two-week timebox in which a team delivers a working increment. A quarter has six sprints. See Scrum at Pecos Mutual.

Sprint goal

The one-sentence outcome a team commits to for a sprint. See Run a sprint planning session.

Strategic project

A larger change the business chooses on purpose, delivered by a cross-functional project team through Discovery, Planning and Delivery. See The value delivery system.

T-shirt size

A rough project size from XS to XL, counted in team-sprints. XL must be split before Gate 2. See Estimate with T-shirt sizes.

Team-sprint

One team working for one two-week sprint. The unit we use for sizes and capacity. See Estimate with T-shirt sizes.

Velocity

The amount of work a team completes in a sprint, averaged over recent sprints, used as a guide when planning. See Run a sprint planning session.