Jason's Braindump

What is Spike?

What is Spike?

A spike is a product development method originating from Extreme Programming that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions. 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.

It is a task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than at producing shippable product. Sometimes a user story is generated that cannot be well estimated until the development team does some actual work to resolve a technical question or a design problem. The solution is to create a “spike”, which is some work whose purpose is to provide the answer or solution.1

Uses

A spike in a sprint can be used in a number of ways:

  • As a way to familiarize the team with new hardware or software
  • To analyze a problem thoroughly and assist in properly dividing work among separate team members
  • Spikes tests can also be used to mitigate future risk, and may uncover additional issues that have escaped notice

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.

To track such work items, in a ticketing system, a new user story can be set up for each spike, for organization purposes.

Following a spike, the results (a new design, a refined workflow, etc.) are shared and discussed with the team.

Read more

In Scrum, 3 terms are usually used(or one of them):

  • Spike

    – a quick and dirty implementation, designed to be thrown away, to gain knowledge

    – indicator: unable to estimate a user story effectively

  • Research

    – broad, foundational knowledge-gaining to decide what to spike or give the ability to estimate

    – indicator: don’t know a potential solution

  • Tracer Bullet

    – very narrow implementation in production quality of an epic/large user story

    – indicator: user story is too large in estimation

Reference

  1. 以回答问题或收集信息为目的的任务，而不是生产非专业产品的任务。有时编写 User Story 时，无法很好地对其进行估算 User Story Point，直到开发团队做一些实际工作来解决技术问题或设计问题为止。解决这一问题的方法是创建一个 “Spike”，这代表要做一些工作，其目的是提供解决问题的方法或者寻找解决问题的答案。 ↩︎