Spike

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What Does Spike Mean?

Spike is an indicator used by Agile software to build theoretical features that should be included in software. A user’s spike (story) should be determined according to what the user states during basic development project phases and geared toward user software requirements.

Techopedia Explains Spike

Spikes help avoid expanding documents that increase administrative overhead. A user spike allows a developing team to react quickly to user requirements and goals.

A user spike is typically written in human language in the form of informal statements. These statements are transformed into algorithms that require user acceptance before being turned into working program code. To transform user spikes into code, the developer must ask a series of questions that are used to indicate constraints that must be considered during development phases. If code lacks any user requirement, a complete procedural rewrite may result.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.