Scrum is one of the popular methodologies of Agile Development, which includes a fixed sprint schedule and regular requirements testing. These activities are performed by common roles such as product owner, scrum master, and group members. Learn about the basics of Agile Development process.

Scrum framework

Familiarize yourself with the terminology and artifacts used in Agile Development.
Assignment group or Agile team

Group of users who are involved in working on and completing the development for an Agile product. In Agile Development 2.0, this team is called as an assignment group.

In an assignment group, a user is designated as the scrum master, who is responsible to ensure that all the scrum activities are properly performed for a release.

Epic

High-level definition of a requirement that provides value to the business, such as a new feature or a significant enhancement. Epics are broken down into Agile stories and can be worked on by a single or multiple teams.

Story

Short, manageable pieces of work that are related to an epic. Stories capture the who, what, and why of a requirement in a simple and concise way. Using the description and criteria mentioned in the stories, teams can accurately estimate the effort required to implement the work in it.

Scrum task

Distinct tasks that are required to complete a story. A task might require from 4 through 12 hours to complete.

Backlog

List of work that must be implemented, as part of achieving specific outcomes. Backlog contains work related to new features, enhancements to existing features, and other activities of product development.

Backlog is considered as the single source of work for a product or team. Anything that is not included in the backlog would not be prioritized for development.

Personal backlog

Product owners define a personalized work pipeline called personal backlog, by applying relevant filter criteria. In Agile Development 2.0, product owners can define as many personalized backlogs as necessary. The criteria used to create the personalized backlog is flexible and can be modified at any time.

Sprint

Short, fixed periods, in which team members pick and complete a set number of stories. These short, time-boxed cycles provide the teams the flexibility to adapt to changing priorities.

The cadence of recurrence for a sprint is decided by the development teams and the product owners. For example, a 10-day sprint, or a 1-week sprint.

Sprint backlog

Scope of work for a sprint. Product owners and their development teams use the sprint planning activity to review their backlog and decide on the stories to be picked up for a sprint.

Theme

Area of focus with an associated business value. A theme is related to one or more of the company's goals. Themes help you prioritize your work at a high level and can be associated with multiple epics.

Product

Entity to organize themes, epics, and stories of similar functionality into a single context. A product represents an item or a feature that is to be developed and released to the market.

Release

A release has a start and end date during which several development iterations are completed. Releases are created by a product owner and contain user stories, sometimes from multiple products and can also involve multiple teams. The stories associated to a release form its release backlog.

Note: In Agile Development 2.0, ensure that you create a product before you create themes, epics, or stories. You cannot submit these records without attaching them to a product.

After creating stories and scrum tasks for your products, you can create a personalized backlog containing the stories from one or more of these products.

Scrum activities

The Scrum process usually consists of the following activities.
Sprint planning

Assignment group members meet to decide on the stories that they can commit to deliver in the sprint. Typically, they commit to the top ranked stories first. The group decides which scrum tasks are necessary for each story. The product owner should be present to answer any questions.

Daily standup

Assignment group members meet to discuss the progress of their work from the previous day, work planned for the current day, and any blockers. The daily standup keeps the group members focused on completing the stories for the current sprint and informs the scrum master of any blockers.

At the end of the sprint, all its stories should be complete. Any incomplete stories are moved back into the backlog, or a future sprint.

Sprint reviews

Sprint review meetings are held at the end of each sprint. In these meetings, the assignment group reviews the work that they completed and demonstrate the newly developed features to their product owner.

Sprint retrospectives

A retrospective meeting is conducted at the end of each sprint, to facilitate discussion between the group members on what went well and what did not. The goal of a sprint retrospective is to discuss ways to improve the execution of future sprints.

For details on how Agile Development 2.0 can help you manage your efforts of product development, see Agile Development process flow.

Scrum reports

Scrum reports help you analyze the performance and progress of your agile team. These reports can be related to an epic, sprint or release, and provide historical data of your team's work velocity. Performance Analytics Content Pack for Agile 2.0 provides preconfigured dashboards with data visualizations to help you improve your Agile practices.

For more information, see Performance Analytics Content Pack for Agile 2.0.