The document provides an overview of key agile concepts used in Scrum, including the product owner, scrum master, product backlog, release planning, sprints, sprint backlogs, burndown charts, and scrum meetings. The product owner is responsible for the product vision and backlog. The scrum master facilitates the process and removes impediments. Release planning selects features for releases from the backlog. Sprints are short development cycles used to complete portions of the backlog. Burndown charts visually track work remaining over time to help monitor progress.

1. Agile Practices
Some Quick Notes on Scrum Concepts
By Rick Barron

2. 2
Building A Product
What:
You come up with an idea for a product
that you want to build and release to the
marketplace.
Who:
To get this product to market you’re going
to need input from various groups...users,
customers, developers, stake holders,
testers, etc. More importantly, to get your
project off the ground, you’ll need a product
owner and a scrum master.
Source: Globus Design Associates Blog

3. 3
Product Owner
Purpose:
The Product Owner’s role is to ensure the
right features make it into the product
backlog.The product owner is typically a
project's key stakeholder. It is important
that a product owner have a vision of what
to build and that the product owner be able
to convey that vision to the team.
Details:
Besides providing direction, the product
owner is commonly a lead user of the
system or someone from marketing,
product management, or anyone with a
solid understanding of users, the market
place, and the competition.
Source: Advertising & Business Ideas

4. 4
Scrum Master
Purpose:
Besides being a facilitator, the scrum master
makes sure the project moves forward in a
smooth fashion, plus ensuring every
member of the team has the tools and
resources to get their job done.
Details:
This person sets up the meetings, monitors
the work being down, and facilitates release
planning.They remove the barriers between
the development and the product owner so
that the product owner directly drives
development.Think of this person as a
Project Manager Source: Zazzle

5. 5
Product Backlog
What:
The product backlog is a prioritized
features list, containing short descriptions
of all functionality desired in the product.
Some details:
A typical product backlog comprises the
following different types of items:
1. Features
2. Bugs
3. Technical work
4. Knowledge acquisition
Source: Pichler Consulting

6. 6
Release Planning
What:
To develop your Release Backlog, you start
with the Product Backlog, and select the
features you want in the first release.
Details:
Gathering the must have features then
folds into what is called the Release Backlog.
It’s at this stage that the team prioritizes
each feature, along with time durations for
each feature so as to come up with
estimated hours.
Tip: Involve subject matter experts who
have experience with the type of product
you’re building. It will save a lot of time and
mishaps.
Source: Getty Images

7. 7
Sprints
What:
Armed with the release backlog you now
determine estimates of time durations for
each feature and how they should be
prioritized. Once you have estimates for all
the features, you’ll have an summary of the
total time required to complete your work.
Why:
Next step is developing your sprints. Sprints
are short duration milestones allowing the
team to address a manageable amount of
the project at hand, and progress towards
completion for the planned launch. Source: Scrum Development Blog

8. 8
Sprint Durations
Duration:
The amount of time required really depends
on the product release cycles.That said,
sprints can range from 2-3 days and up to
25-30 days.
Why:
Two-week sprint durations (10 business
days) is the de facto standard.Why?
It allows a team to have some creativity, and
provides a near-term deadline that kills
procrastination and forces members
challenges to the surface.
Source: Gatwaytola

9. 9
Sprint Backlogs
Objectives:
Take the release backlog and split it into
sprint backlogs.The best way to do that is
by displaying the sprint backlog on a wall,
ideally in the form of a task board.
Why:
A task board is oriented in rows and
columns with each row containing a
particular user story and one index card or
sticky note for each task involved in that
story.Task cards are organized in columns,
minimally including “To Do” “In Process,”
and “Done.” The team is able to see work
progressing across the task board during
the sprint and all work to be done is visible
Source: Boris Gloger

10. Burndown Charts
What:
How does one monitor progress?You use
what is referenced as a burndown chart.The
added value with the chart is that you get a
visual glance regarding the status of your
project instantly.
Why:
With this visual, you can measure on a
day-by-day basis, the work remaining for
each sprint release.The trend you want to
see the line moving is towards zero.
Source: InfoQ

11. BurndownVelocity
The Slope:
Viewing the burndown chart, you’re able to
create the slope of the graph, what is
referenced as the burndown velocity.
What:
Burndown velocity is how much product
backlog effort a team can handle in one
sprint.This can be estimated by viewing
previous sprints, assuming the team
composition and sprint duration are kept
constant. For example a teams rate of
productivity might be that on a typical day
they finish approximately 40 hours of work.
Source: Kutuma’s Ramblings

12. The Data
Where:
Where does the data come from for the
burndown chart? Stemming from the
Release Planning stage, estimates were
created for each selected feature in the
backlog.The sum of all the estimates for
each product sprint, represents the total
amount of work required for each sprint.
Additionally:
As progress moves forward for each sprint,
updates are reflected, and showing time
remaining needed to complete each item.
That said, the total amount of time
remaining for all features that make up a
sprint, will change from day to day, until
Source: Agile Alliance

13. 13
Scrum Meetings
What:
A stand-up meeting is a daily team meeting
held to provide a status update to the team
members. Each member talks about
progress since the last stand-up, the
anticipated work until the next stand-up
and any impediments, taking the
opportunity to ask for help.
Why:
The premise behind the standing is to
prevent getting relaxed sitting down...time
will not be wasted. Nobody likes to stand
for an hour while two people are arguing
about the protocol implementation details. Source: A Deep Dive Into Agile