What is sprint?

Sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review. The duration of a sprint is determined by the scrum master, Traditionally, a sprint lasts 30 days. During the sprint, the team holds daily standup meeting to discuss progress and brainstorm solutions to challenges.

Each sprint begins with a planning meeting. During the meeting, the product owner (the person requesting the work) and the development team agree upon exactly what work will be accomplished during the sprint. The development team determines how much work can realistically be accomplished during the sprint At the end of the sprint, the team presents its completed work to the project owner and the project owner uses the criteria established at the sprint planning meeting to either accept or reject the work.

What is the sprint duration?

The Sprint duration is the period of time in which one sprint is counted as completed. This time period varies from team to team and depends on their preferences. However, usually, the duration is anywhere from 2-4 weeks.

What is Sprint planning meeting?

The Sprint planning meeting is held between the Scrum team, Product Owner, and Scrum Master. The objective of the meeting is to go through all of the user stories that are currently in the backlog. User stories are then selected with consensus between all parties and moved to the appropriate sprint. For the sprint planning meeting to be effective, the following checklist needs to be met:

  • User stories are prioritized well.
  • User stories are defined and explained well.

Before the meeting:

Product owner explains the user stories and all of the use cases to everyone. The Team now has the opportunity to ask questions about them and get rid of any confusion and get clarifications.

The team now starts effort estimation using the method of planning poker. Once effort estimation is done, user stories are assigned to individual team members and work is started.

After the meeting:

Once the meeting is over, the team member who has been working on user stories will write a task and each of those tasks will be estimated as well.

What is Sprint Backlog?

Sprint backlog is a list of the tasks and requirements to be completed within the sprint. The sprint backlog includes:

  • The list of user stories within the sprint in order of priority.
  • The relative effort estimate for each user story.
  • The tasks necessary to develop each user story.
  • The effort, in hours, to complete each task.
  • A burn down chart that shows the status of the work the development team has completed.

What is Scrum Velocity?

Velocity is a measure in the Agile methodology. Simply put, velocity measures the rate at which the team gets work done in a single iteration. It deals with what actually was achieved as opposed to what was planned in that iteration.