| Acceptance Criteria |
Observable conditions used to decide whether a ticket delivered the intended outcome. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| Backlog |
The column that holds candidate work not yet committed for execution. |
Workflow Overview |
| Coach |
The role that maintains process health, facilitates team rituals, and protects workflow discipline. |
Roles & Responsibilities |
| Column |
A vertical board state that represents a meaningful change in the lifecycle of a ticket. |
Workflow Overview |
| Cycle Time |
The elapsed time between work starting and the ticket reaching Done. |
WIP & Flow |
| Definition of Done (DoD) |
The set of quality and completion conditions that must be true before a ticket is finished. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| Design Doc |
A short document used to align on the approach, risks, and validation plan before implementation. |
Design Docs |
| Interrupt |
Unexpected work that is important enough to enter the flow quickly but is not a Swarm event. |
Workflow Overview |
| On Call Engineer |
The rotating role responsible for first response to incidents and other urgent intake. |
Roles & Responsibilities |
| Planning Session |
The periodic meeting where the team shapes, estimates, and prioritizes upcoming work. |
Meetings |
| Planning Poker |
A technique for estimating relatively while reducing anchoring by revealing estimates at the same time. |
Meetings |
| Planned |
The normal stream of intentionally prioritized work. |
Workflow Overview |
| Rail |
A horizontal lane used to separate tickets by urgency or type. |
Workflow Overview |
| Ready |
The column holding the next work items that are clear enough and important enough to start. |
Workflow Overview |
| Retrospective (Retro) |
The recurring meeting where the team reviews outcomes and chooses process improvements. |
Meetings |
| Shepherd |
The person responsible for keeping a ticket moving through shaping, review, and validation. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| SLA (Service Level Agreement) |
The team’s expected maximum age for an active ticket, used to keep work small and flow healthy. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| Spike |
A time-boxed research ticket used to reduce uncertainty and produce clearer follow-up work. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| Standup |
The short daily meeting that reviews active tickets, blockers, and next movement through the board. |
Meetings |
| Starfish Retrospective |
A broader retrospective format using Start, Stop, Keep, More, and Less categories. |
Meetings |
| Swarm |
The highest-priority urgent work, usually involving shared team attention and rapid response. |
Workflow Overview |
| Ticket |
The smallest practical unit of work that can deliver a meaningful, reviewable, and validatable outcome. |
Tickets & Sizing |
| Value Stream Mapping |
A structured review of how a ticket actually moved so the team can identify where delay entered the system. |
Meetings |
| WIP (Work In Progress) |
The count of active tickets currently in the system, excluding backlog and completed work. |
WIP & Flow |
| WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) |
A prioritization heuristic that compares the value of doing work soon with the effort required to complete it. |
Meetings |