Agile & Scrum

A fixed-length iteration (typically 1–4 weeks) during which a Scrum team completes a set of backlog items.

"We ship to production at the end of every sprint, so features go live every two weeks."

An ordered list of all work items (features, bugs, improvements) that represent the future development of the product.

"The product owner prioritised the backlog before sprint planning, moving the authentication story to the top."

The amount of work a team completes in a sprint, typically measured in story points. Used to forecast future capacity.

"Our average velocity is 34 points per sprint, so we can commit to 30–35 points this cycle."

A ceremony at the end of each sprint where the team reflects on what went well, what didn't, and what to improve.

"In the retrospective we identified that slow code reviews were blocking merges — we agreed to a 24-hour SLA."

A large body of work that can be broken down into smaller user stories or tasks, typically spanning multiple sprints.

"The payment gateway integration is an epic — we broke it down into 12 stories for the roadmap."

A unit of estimate that captures the complexity, effort, and risk of a user story — not hours.

"We assigned 8 story points to the OAuth flow because of the third-party integration risk."

A short daily meeting (≤15 min) where each team member shares what they did, what they'll do, and any blockers.

"In the standup I flagged that the staging environment was down and needed DevOps help before I could continue."

The sum of completed backlog items at the end of a sprint — must be potentially releasable and meet the Definition of Done.

"Every sprint increment is deployed to staging automatically so stakeholders can review it immediately."

A shared checklist of criteria that every completed item must satisfy before it can be considered done.

"Our Definition of Done requires passing tests, code review approval, and updated documentation."

An impediment that prevents a team member from progressing on their work and requires external help to resolve.

"I have a blocker — I'm waiting on the design team's final mockups before I can implement the checkout UI."

A ceremony where the team breaks down, estimates, and clarifies backlog items ahead of sprint planning.

"During refinement we split the large search story into three separate tickets with clearer acceptance criteria."

A time-boxed research task used to investigate a technical problem or reduce uncertainty before committing to a story.

"Let's run a two-day spike on the real-time sync approach before we estimate — we don't yet know if WebSockets or SSE is right."

Conditions that a user story must satisfy to be accepted by the product owner — defines the boundary of the work.

"The acceptance criteria for the search feature: results appear within 500ms, empty state shows a helpful message."

A chart showing remaining work versus time in a sprint. A healthy burndown trends steadily toward zero.

"The burndown chart is flat mid-sprint — let's discuss in standup what's blocking progress."

A servant-leader who facilitates Scrum ceremonies, removes impediments, and helps the team improve its process.

"Our Scrum Master escalated the infrastructure access issue to management so the team could keep moving."