New words

Went to a mandatory AGILE methodology meeting session currently being pushed by the client.  Personally I consider myself already sold on Agile methodologies, so feels somewhat that it was going to be a gigantic waste of time.  But it was mandatory, so to keep everyone happy, I went.

I went with a notebook, and just moments before the session, I had a brilliant idea of noting down any new words I'm about to learn that day:

spike-solution

We call it a deep-slice, but it's slightly different.  A spike solution is a focused technical effort to explore whether a technical design is actually possible or feasible.  In the particular Agile session it seems the spike solution is also a throw-away solution.  But I can see it being documented on a dev-wiki until it's used in implementation.

A spike-solution is good because it reduces risk - if an approach can not work, it is better to know early rather than later (say, after all the UI, database, etc have been designed).

re-engineering

It's like re-factoring, but not re-factoring.  It's re-engineering.  You can't engineer a business process, because it's business and not engineering.  But you can re-engineer a business process (I guess by applying engineering processes to a business procedure).

I consider this word a "rubbish word thrown-in to confuse people".