Scrum and Technical Practices : Spike

Spike definition

A spike is an investment to make the story estimable or schedule-able.
- A spike is a product development method originating from Extreme Programming (XP) that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions.
- A Spike is a story or task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than at producing shippable product.
- A spike is an experiment which enables Developers to estimate the user story by giving them enough information about the unknown elements of the same story.

Spike purpose

It is used to determine how much work will be required to solve or work around a software issue.
- Typically, a “spike test” involves gathering additional information or testing for easily reproduced edge cases.
- The term is used in agile software development approaches like Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP).

Spike and Risks

The nature of Agile development is characterized with uncertainties and risks.
- The team determines the right solution through hours spent in discussion, collaboration, experimentation, and negotiation.
- So, every user story has a spike-like structure which helps in identifying the technical and functional risks.
The ultimate goal of the Agile team is to be able to address uncertainty in each iteration.
- Spikes are good, but when there is a high uncertainty they can be critical.

Spike practice

In practice, the spikes teams take on are often proof-of-concept types of activities.
- The definition above says that the work is not focused on the finished product.
- It may even be designed to be thrown away at the end.
- This gives your Product Owner the proper expectation that you will most likely not directly implement the spike solution.

Spike redaction

In order to need to …
Example: In order to split the collection curve wizard story, the tech lead needs to do some detailed design. (Just enough to split the story.)

Spike types

There are three types of Spikes :
- architectural,
- technical,
- and functional.

Spike synonyms

There are many synonyms for spike such as :
- Knowledge Acquisition
- Research
- Proof‐of‐Concept

Technical spikes and Functional spikes

A distinction can be made between technical spikes and functional spikes :
The technical spike is used more often for evaluating the impact new technology has on the current implementation.
A functional spike is used to determine the interaction with a new feature or implementation.

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