Foundations — Agile — Scrum (sprints, roles, ceremonies), Kanban

This page assumes you know nothing. We build every word, arrow, and letter the parent Agile — Scrum & Kanban note leans on, in an order where each idea rests on the one before it.

0. What is "software work" even made of?

Before any math, picture the raw material. A software team turns requests ("let users reset their password") into working features. Each request is a little card. The whole game is: cards come in, cards go out, and we care about how long each card takes and how many are stuck in the middle.

Look at the figure. Three zones — waiting, being worked on, done. Everything below is just names for the quantities you can see here: how many cards sit in the middle, how fast they leave, how long one card lingers.

1. "Batch" and "increment" — the size of a chunk of work

The parent's word "potentially shippable increment" just means: one cupcake that is actually edible — a slice complete enough to hand to a user.

2. Counting time in "sprints" and "days"

Why do we need a letter for it? Because in a moment we'll ask "how much work should be left on day 3 of 10?" — and to answer that we compare a running day-count $d$ against the total $D$.

3. "Story points" — measuring size without measuring hours

Here is the first real notation you must not fear.

4. Summation $\sum$ — the "add all of these up" symbol

The parent writes ${\sum }_{i=1}^n{p}_i$. Let's earn every mark.

5. The mean $\bar{v}$ — one number that stands for many

$\bar{v}=\frac{18+22+20}{3}=\frac{60}{3}=20\text{ points/sprint}$

Velocity is just this $\bar{v}$: a measured fact about the team, not a target.

6. The ceiling $\lceil \cdot \rceil$ — "round up, because you can't have half a sprint"

The parent forecasts with $\lceil \frac{B}{\bar{v}}\rceil$. Two new things: $B$ and the bracket.

7. A line that falls: the burndown, and $R(d)$

8. Flow letters: $L$, $\lambda$, $W$ — the Kanban trio

Now the second cluster of symbols, for the flow world. Go back to the figure in §0 — the same three zones.

9. Two words that connect to the wider map

• SDLC — the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is the overall lifecycle (plan → build → test → release) that Agile is one way of running.
• Waterfall — the Waterfall Model is the "big dam" the parent contrasts Agile with: do every phase once, in order.
• CI/CD — Continuous Integration & Delivery (CI-CD) is the machinery that makes tiny increments actually shippable often.

Prerequisite map

Equipment checklist

Cover the right side; can you answer each before revealing?