This subsection covers foundational terms often encountered early in project planning and agile practices.

• Acceptance Criteria: Conditions a deliverable must meet to be accepted. Practical Context: How you know if a user story or deliverable is truly 'done' and meets needs.
• Adaptive Life Cycle: Approach responding to high change; iterative and incremental (Agile). Practical Context: Used when requirements are expected to evolve; common in software development.
• Affinity Estimating: Grouping similar items for faster relative estimation. Practical Context: Useful for quickly sizing large backlogs.
• Agile: Mindset and approaches emphasizing iteration, increments, collaboration, and responding to change. Practical Context: A philosophy and set of practices, not just one method (Scrum, Kanban are examples).
• Agile Manifesto: Foundational document outlining 4 values and 12 principles. Practical Context: Core values guiding agile approaches.
• Analogous Estimating: Using historical data from similar past projects for estimates. Practical Context: Quick but accuracy depends heavily on similarity of projects.
• Assumption Log: Records assumptions made during planning. Practical Context: Tracks uncertainties treated as true for planning purposes; needs validation.