The following guidelines apply.The output of a spike is demonstrable, both to the team and to any other stakeholders, which brings visibility to the research and architectural efforts, and also helps build collective ownership and shared responsibility for decision-making. The output of a spike is demonstrable, both to the team and to any other stakeholders, which brings visibility to the research and architectural efforts, and also helps build collective ownership and shared responsibility for decision-making. Scaled Agile Framework and SAFe are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile, Inc. The Since they represent uncertainty in one or more potential stories, planning for both the spike and the resulting stories in the same iteration is sometimes risky. Perhaps we’re unsure if we’ll be able to complete the story due to some potential blocker.In these cases, we might want to build a functional or technical experiment to figure it out. Practically, the spike consists in a series of investigations centered around finding solutions to one or more problems. The solution is to create a “spike,” which is some work whose purpose is to provide the answer or solution. That might result in another spike, but time-box the experiments.
A spike has a maximum time-box size as the sprint it is contained in it. The development of an architectural spike/prototype helps to reduce risk to your project because you quickly discover whether your approach is feasible, that you haven't simply produced an ivory tower architecture.
The concept of the spike is often used in conjunction with an architectural issue.
And what should it look like in VersionOne? What’s a Spike? If you weren’t able to answer the question before time runs out, you must still report the results to the team and decide what to do next. Sometimes the architecture spike is referred to as Sprint 0 , since the goal is to map out enough future bones to get going and to start working on creating the product backlog. XP does this while the initial PlanningGame is in process. The goal of an Agile team is to learn how to address uncertainty in each iteration. We might want to look up alternatives. However, if it’s small and straightforward, and a quick solution is likely to be found, then it can be quite efficient to do both in the same iteration.Every user story has uncertainty and risk; that’s the nature of Agile development. A Spike is a great way to mitigate risks early and allows the team ascertain feedback and develop an understanding on an upcoming PBI’s complexity. Please visit For example, if it’s an estimate that you were after, do just enough work to give the estimate and stop.There you have it, an answer to what’s a spike.
An architectural spike is a fixed time/variable scope PBI which is added if the team feels that more investigation is needed in order to maximize velocity (or to get better estimates). These are “spikes”. It's not an iteration - it might be longer or shorter, we don't know yet. Here’s an example:“As a consumer, I want to see my daily energy use in a histogram so that I can quickly understand my past, current, and projected energy consumption.”In this case, a team might create both types of spikes:Since spikes do not directly deliver user value, use them sparingly. Figure 5 overviews an agile approach to the prioritized requirements "best practice". Do an experiment with some other library or software package. It simply isn’t possible for all teams to anticipate changes that may occur well outside their environment. It sounds like the uncertainty the spike is trying to remove should be out of the way before taking the story in the sprint.Your email address will not be published. A more serious answer would be that the technical story format would be good:I like to start the name or title with “SPIKE:” to make them stand out in the ALM tool. Consider alternative refactoring paths.These are “spikes”. You can call them research spikes, or architectural spikes, or refactoring spikes if you wish.A spike as an investment the Product Owner makes to figure out what needs to be built and how the team is going to build it — in advance of actually building it.
What to do next might be to define another spike.You might say “I think there’s a bug in the app server… there’s no way I can hear back from their support within the time-box.” The timebox is effort, not calendar time. The cocky answer is to say “make your tech lead enter it”. )Excellent questions! Agile is a new business paradigm, but few established… An Executive’s Guide to Large-Scale Agile Transformation & Sustaining an Adaptive EnterpriseUnderstanding Agile Transformation: What Are We Transforming?Understanding Agile Transformation: What Obstacles Must We Overcome?“A spike is an investment to make the story estimable or schedule-able.”Enter your Email below to signup for blog updates via EmailEnter your Email below to signup for blog updates via Email
More than you ever wanted to know about spikes!Spike is for gathering information or answering a question rather than produce a “done” product.Like driving a literal stake into the ground, a Spike Solution is a quick deep dive into a problem. Thus, in one sense, every user story contains spike-like activities to identify the technical and functional risks. It's not about writing code.