Agile Glossary
A
Acceptance criteria
Acceptance criteria are clear, concise, and testable conditions that must be met for a product backlog item—such as a user story or feature—to meet customer or user expectations. They define the “what” of the work, focusing on the desired outcome rather than the implementation details. Typically developed collaboratively during backlog refinement or sprint planning, acceptance criteria serve as a pass/fail checklist that guides development and validation efforts, helping teams deliver high-quality, user-focused solutions.
Learn more: Everything you need to know about acceptance criteria
Agile
Agile is a way of thinking and working that values flexibility, teamwork, and continuous learning. It encourages teams to deliver value early and often, learn from feedback, and adjust plans as needed. Originally designed for software development, agile is now used by all kinds of teams who want to become more responsive to change while driving more impact in their roles.
Anti-pattern
An anti-pattern is a common way of doing things that seems helpful but actually causes problems or prevents progress. It's a bad habit or approach that teams fall into, often without realizing it, and it leads to poor outcomes instead of improvement. Example: A team holding daily scrums where one person talks and everyone else only listens. This may look like good communication is occurring, but it defeats the purpose of shared collaboration and problem-solving.
B
Burndown chart
A burndown chart provides a visualization of how much work is left in a sprint or project. As work gets completed, the chart updates to show progress and help the team see whether they're on pace to finish as originally projected. Teams may annotate the chart to indicate when the scope increases or decreases over time. Sprint burndown charts are usually maintained by developers to track progress toward completing the sprint backlog. Product or release burndown charts, which show progress toward the product goal, are typically maintained by the product owner.
Business agility
Business agility is an organization’s ability to sense and respond swiftly to change with confidence and adaptability. Business agility helps an organization adjust quickly to market changes, internal challenges, and evolving customer needs while staying competitive. By applying agile principles throughout the organization, a business can encourage innovation, make faster decisions, and create a culture of continuous learning to stay ahead.
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Cross-functional team
A cross-functional team is a group of people, each from different functional areas, who collaborate to achieve common goals. In a scrum or agile context, the team has all the necessary skills to deliver value within a sprint or iteration. Its structure supports self-management and enables incremental and iterative value delivery. By reducing hand-offs, cross-functional teams tend to offer faster decision-making, effective problem-solving, and optimal communication.
D
Daily scrum
The daily scrum is a brief, timeboxed meeting in which a team (or the developers, in scrum terms) reviews progress toward their sprint goal and plans their work for the next day. The daily scrum helps the team stay aligned, identify obstacles, and make necessary adjustments to keep the sprint on track. Holding it at the same time each day promotes consistency and helps the team count on one another.
Learn more about the daily scrum
Definition of Done
The Definition of Done (DoD) is a set of intrinsic quality standards that must be fulfilled for a piece of work to be truly complete. It helps the team know when something is ready to use—fully built/created, tested, and reviewed—so there's no confusion or unfinished work hiding behind the scenes.
Learn more: What is the Definition of Done (DoD)?
Definition of Ready
A Definition of Ready (DoR) is a team’s shared understanding of what makes a product backlog item clear enough to begin working on. Unlike the Definition of Done, the DoR is not included in the Scrum Guide, but some teams use it as a checklist during backlog refinement or sprint planning to make sure items are well understood, sized appropriately, and free of major blockers.
Learn more: Pros and cons of a definition of ready
Developer
In scrum, developers are the people in the scrum team who build or develop the work planned in a sprint. Scrum team developers may build products, services, systems, content, or other outcomes depending on their domain. Developers work together to plan the sprint, create a usable increment, and adjust their work daily to stay on track.
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Empiricism
Empiricism puts forward that all knowledge comes from experience and observation. Empiricism in scrum means teams rely on observations and past experiences to learn, improve, and guide their decisions. Teams regularly review their progress, take in feedback, and adjust their plans to stay on track. This ongoing cycle of inspecting and adapting helps teams navigate uncertainty and continuously improve their results.
Epic
An epic is a large, high-level piece of work that is too big to be completed in a single work iteration or sprint. It serves as a flexible container for related product backlog items (PBIs), user stories, or other smaller work units, and can be delivered incrementally over multiple sprints. Epics help teams organize and manage complex initiatives by framing them into more manageable slices of work, facilitating continuous value delivery and adaptability to changing requirements.
Learn more: What is an epic in agile?
Event
In scrum, events are scheduled, timeboxed activities that help the team stay aligned, track progress, and make improvements. There are five scrum events: the sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective. These events create regular opportunities for collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement throughout the sprint.
Learn more: The scrum events and how they work together.
Estimation
Estimation on an agile team is the process of predicting how much effort, time, or complexity will be involved in completing a unit of work. It helps stable teams plan their iterations or sprints while setting expectations, without aiming for perfect accuracy—just enough to make good decisions and keep projects moving forward.
Learn more: What is story point estimation?
F
Fibonacci scale
In the context of an agile team, the Fibonacci scale is a series of numbers that can be used to estimate the size or complexity of work, often in story points. The numbers grow roughly exponentially—1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.—which helps teams recognize that uncertainty increases with larger tasks. This scale encourages discussion and shared understanding, rather than false precision, making it easier for teams to agree on effort estimates and plan work more realistically.
Learn more: A guide to using the Fibonacci sequence in scrum
Forecast
A forecast is an informed prediction made by a team about how much work they believe they can complete in an upcoming sprint, iteration, or cycle. Most teams arrive at their forecast by considering past performance, team capacity, and the complexity of the work. Unlike a commitment, a forecast recognizes that unforeseen changes may occur, and adjustments might be necessary. Forecasts allow teams to plan realistically while remaining adaptable. By treating forecasts as expectations rather than guarantees, teams can better manage uncertainty and deliver value incrementally.
Learn more: It's not a target, it's a forecast
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Goal
In the context of an agile team, a goal is a clear, shared purpose that guides the team’s work and helps everyone stay focused on what matters most. It describes the outcome the team wants to achieve—not simply the tasks to complete—and helps with planning, decision-making, and measuring success.
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Increment
In scrum, an increment is a concrete step forward toward fulfilling the product goal. While often associated with product development, an increment can represent any valuable outcome, such as the first chapter in a training manual or a new digital intake form at a hospital. However, it should be usable to provide value. By delivering increments early and often, scrum teams can gather feedback and adapt quickly.
Learn more: What is a product increment?
Incremental
Incremental development means building something in small, usable pieces that add value over time. In product development, each increment builds on the last, adding new, usable functionality. Instead of finishing one layer of a system at a time, teams deliver working versions that grow more complete with each sprint.
Iteration
An iteration is a fixed period of time during which a team completes a focused set of work, typically producing a usable or valuable increment of a product. In agile development, iterations usually last one to four weeks and follow a regular rhythm that helps teams inspect progress, adapt plans, and improve over time.
Iterative
In an iterative approach, teams develop products in repeated cycles, refining their work based on feedback and new information. They expect to revisit and improve earlier work rather than aiming for a perfect solution upfront. This approach helps teams adapt to change and make thoughtful improvements over time.
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Kanban
Kanban is a visual way to manage work as it moves through a process. Work items are shown on a board with columns like “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done,” so everyone can see what’s being worked on, what’s finished, and what’s up next.
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Lead time
Lead time in product development is the total time it takes from the moment work is requested until it's completed and delivered. It includes everything—from planning and design to development, testing, and release. By tracking and improving lead time, teams can optimize workflow, reduce bottlenecks, and deliver value more quickly.
M
Minimum viable product (MVP)
A minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest version of a product that can be released to users. With an MVP, a development team can test its viability and gather feedback from users or customers. By validating ideas early, teams can refine or pivot their product before investing significant time and resources. Crucially, an MVP maximizes learning about customer needs with the least effort, enabling teams to determine whether the product is both desirable and feasible in the market. This learning-driven approach ensures that future development is guided by evidence rather than assumptions.
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Niko Niko
A Niko-Niko calendar is a simple way for teams to track how everyone feels each day. By marking their mood at the end of the workday, team members can spot patterns in morale and well-being over time.
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Open Space
An Open Space is a gathering where participants create the agenda together at the start of the event. Anyone can propose a topic they care about and join discussions they care about. Conversations take place in parallel sessions, and attendees are free to move between them. The format provides enough structure to keep discussions focused while allowing flexibility for new ideas to emerge.
Learn more: Create the conference you need at Open Space
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Planning Poker®
Planning Poker® is a team-based activity used to estimate the effort involved in completing backlog items. Traditionally, the team listens to or reads a brief overview of the item, then each person privately selects a card with the number that reflects how much effort they think it will take to complete the backlog item. Everyone reveals their estimates at once, and the team discusses any big differences before settling on a shared number.
Product backlog
A product backlog is a set of items that helps a team stay focused on what’s most important to deliver as they build or improve something—like a product, service, or campaign. It includes all kinds of work, from new ideas and improvements to operational work and fixes. Product backlogs are not set in stone: They can and should evolve based on feedback and changes, allowing an agile team to remain flexible and adaptive. One person, called the product owner, is responsible for managing the product backlog, which is continuously updated as new information becomes available.
Learn more: What is a product backlog in scrum?
Product backlog item
A product backlog item (PBI) is a unit of potential work on the product backlog that represents something the team might do to create or enhance value (for example, a marketing team may have a PBI called "Create a welcome email template for new subscribers").
Backlog items can take many forms—such as tasks, ideas, improvements, or research—and their size and level of detail may vary depending on when the team expects to address them. Each item serves as a placeholder for future conversations about what to do and why, helping the team stay aligned with its overarching goals.
Product goal
The product goal is the scrum team's long-term objective, describing the ideal future state of the product. It's a target the scrum team uses as they plan what to focus on next and how to deliver the most value.
Learn more: What are product goals in scrum?
Product owner
The product owner is a scrum team accountability. Every scrum team has three accountabilities: a product owner, scrum master, and developers. Product owners manage the product backlog, set priorities based on stakeholder needs and business goals, and work closely with developers to clarify what to build and why.
Learn more: The scrum team roles and accountabilities.
Product roadmap
A product roadmap is a high-level plan that outlines the direction, priorities, and key milestones for a product over time. It helps teams and stakeholders stay aligned by visualizing how upcoming work supports the product vision and long-term goals. Product owners use roadmaps to guide decisions, communicate progress, and adapt to changing needs.
Learn more: Product roadmaps: your secret weapon for success.
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Refactoring
In the context of an agile team, to refactor means to improve the structure or cleanliness of existing code without changing what it does. It's like tidying up a messy room, making the code easier to read, understand, and maintain, so the team can work faster and with fewer errors in the future.
Refinement
Product backlog refinement is the ongoing process of reviewing and updating the list of work items (known as the product backlog) that a scrum team aims to complete. This involves breaking down large slices of work into smaller, more manageable ones, clarifying details and expectations, and ordering items to ensure the team is always working on the most valuable tasks. It's a collaborative effort, typically involving the product owner and the scrum developers. By discussing upcoming work in advance, they can avoid delays and make better decisions about what to tackle next.
S
Scrum
Scrum is a framework for completing work and delivering value to customers and stakeholders in short, iterative cycles called sprints. Scrum teams inspect progress, adjust plans, and deliver usable increments of value regularly, instead of an all-at-once final product after months or years of work. Built on empiricism and lean thinking, scrum supports teamwork, transparency, and ongoing improvement to deliver value.
Learn more: What is scrum?
Scrum board
A scrum board is a visual tool a scrum team may opt to use to organize, visualize, and track their sprint work. A common board setup shows work to be done, work in progress, and completed work.
Learn more: What is a scrum board?
Scrum Guide
The Scrum Guide is the official resource that defines the scrum framework, written by its co-creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. It outlines the core elements of scrum—accountabilities, events, artifacts, and their guiding principles—to help teams apply scrum effectively. The guide offers a lightweight, flexible structure that supports teams in solving complex problems and delivering value.
Scrum master
The scrum master is an accountability in a scrum team, along with a product owner and developers. The scrum master helps everyone understand and apply scrum. They guide the team in self-management, support collaboration with the product owner, and help remove obstacles that slow progress. By creating the right environment for focus and improvement, they make it easier for the team to deliver value.
Scrum of Scrums
Originating with Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber—two of the creators of the scrum framework—scrum of scrums is a technique for scaling scrum across multiple teams that are working on the same product goals. Each team's designated ambassador participates in the scrum of scrums to represent their team. During the meeting, the ambassadors help coordinate work, address cross-team dependencies, and resolve shared challenges, which leads to better alignment and collaboration at scale.
Scrum team
A scrum team is a small, self-managing group that includes a product owner, scrum master, and product developers ("developers" are not limited to software and in fact may develop a wide range of products, services, or operations. Even in software, the word "developers" in scrum includes testers, because they contribute to the work). Together, they focus on delivering incremental value each sprint and share accountability for achieving the product goal. The team is cross-functional, meaning it includes all the skills needed to turn ideas into working solutions without relying on others outside the team.
Scrum values
Scrum values are the five principles that guide how a scrum team works together: commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage. These values help create an environment of trust and collaboration, where the team can respond to change and solve complex problems. When the team embraces these values, they support the transparency, inspection, and adaptation that make scrum effective.
Self-managing
A self-managing team decides both what work to do and how to do it. The team takes full responsibility for organizing and carrying out their work. Rather than relying on a manager to assign tasks or make decisions, the team decides together who does what, when, and how. This approach promotes ownership, adaptability, and collaboration, helping the team respond more effectively to change.
Self-organizing
A self-organizing team decides how to do the work, but not necessarily what work to do. Self-organizing teams decide together how to approach their work instead of waiting for instructions from outside the team. In scrum, this means they collaborate on planning, problem-solving, and adapting as they go. It’s a way of working that builds shared ownership and gives team members more say in how they get things done.
Sprint
The scrum event known as the sprint is the container for all other scrum events. A sprint is a fixed-length cycle (often two weeks) during which a scrum team works to deliver value and complete a subset of their product backlog. The sprint cadence provinces a consistent rhythm for planning, collaboration, and delivery by containing all other scrum events and ongoing development activities. Sprints run back-to-back without gaps, helping the team maintain momentum and adapt based on regular inspection and feedback.
Sprint planning
Sprint planning is the scrum event in which the team decides what they will work on during their current sprint and how they will approach that work. The product owner brings the high-priority or most urgent items from the product backlog, and the team collaborates to set a clear sprint goal and select the work they believe they can complete. The developers then plan how to deliver those items, creating a sprint backlog that guides their efforts for the sprint ahead.
Sprint retrospective
The sprint retrospective is the scrum event in which the team reflects on how they worked together during the last sprint, identifying ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of their work in the future. Retrospectives tend to focus on team collaboration, tools, and processes, although each retrospective is unique. It’s the last event of the sprint, following the sprint review and preceding the next sprint planning.
Sprint review
The sprint review is the scrum event held near the end of each sprint, just prior to sprint retrospective. The scrum team shares with stakeholders the work they've completed and the value they've delivered. They gather feedback to help shape the next steps and adapt the plan ahead. The conversation may lead to updates in the product backlog as everyone collaborates to move closer to the product goal.
Learn more: What is a sprint review?
Stakeholder
A stakeholder is someone outside the team who has a meaningful interest in the product and can offer insights that shape its development. Stakeholders often include users, customers, or others with a connection to the product's success, and they regularly engage with the scrum team during events like the sprint review. Their feedback helps guide future work and supports the team’s goal of delivering real value.
Story map
A story map is a visual tool that helps agile teams organize and prioritize user stories by mapping them against user workflows. The horizontal axis typically represents the sequence of user activities (user journey), while the vertical axis reflects priority or implementation layers, from a minimal viable product at the top to expanded features below. This structure supports shared understanding, early value delivery, and iterative development.
Story point
Story points are a way for teams to estimate the effort involved in completing a product backlog item. Rather than measuring time, story points reflect factors like complexity, uncertainty, and the amount of work involved. For example, if planning a community event, sending invitations might be estimated at 2 story points, while organizing the venue and catering could be 8 story points because it’s more complex and involves more steps. Teams use story points to build shared understanding and forecast what they can take on during a sprint.
Story splitting
Story splitting is the practice of breaking a large product backlog item into smaller, more manageable pieces while still preserving business value in each part. It helps the team deliver meaningful progress more frequently and supports smoother flow within a sprint. Teams often use story splitting when a backlog item is too large to complete within a single sprint.
Scrumban
Scrumban is a work management method that combines elements of scrum and kanban. Although there are many variations, scrumban often leverages some of scrum’s structure, like planning and review practices, while using kanban’s continuous flow and visual boards to help teams stay flexible, adjust priorities easily, and keep work moving efficiently.
Stand-up meeting
A daily standup is a short team meeting used to share updates and coordinate work, common in agile environments. In the scrum framework, the daily synchronization event is called the daily scrum, as defined in the Scrum Guide; the terms often get used interchangeably. Scrum Alliance encourages using the term daily scrum to reflect its purpose as a focused, goal-oriented event rather than a general status meeting.
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Technical debt
Technical debt happens when a team takes shortcuts in code or design to move faster in the short term. These compromises may save time initially, but often lead to more work and complexity later. If left unaddressed, technical debt can slow progress and increase the cost of future changes.
Learn more: Avoiding technical debt with these "core four" practices.
Three questions
The three questions are a common format used during the daily scrum to help team members communicate progress and surface challenges. They are: What did I do yesterday that helped the team meet the sprint goal? What will I do today to help the team meet the sprint goal? What is blocking my progress or the team’s progress towards meeting the sprint goal? While still used by some teams, the Scrum Guide never required this format, and many teams missed the important element of focus on the sprint goal. Focusing on the sprint goal encourages teams to structure the daily scrum in a way that best supports collaboration and planning.
Timebox
A timebox is a fixed, maximum amount of time set aside for a scrum event or activity. It helps the team stay on track, work together more effectively, and know what to expect in terms of time commitment. Teams can end a scrum event early if they meet their objective before the time runs out.
Learn more: What is timeboxing in scrum?
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User story
A user story is a simple, clear description of something a user needs or wants to do with a product or service. It focuses on the user's perspective and helps teams understand what to build and why. Instead of listing technical tasks, a user story explains the goal in plain language—often using the format: "As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [a benefit or reason]."
Learn more: The Anatomy of a User Story
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Velocity
Velocity is a measurement of the work completed during a team's sprint or iteration, usually counted in total story points completed. Teams track their velocity over time to understand their delivery pace and use that insight to plan future sprints more confidently and improve predictability. For velocity to have any value as a predictive measure, the team composition should be stable over time.
Learn more: What is a scrum team velocity formula?