User Story

A user story is a very high-level definition of a requirement, containing just enough

information so that the developers can produce a reasonable estimate of the effort to
implement it. A user story is one or more sentences in the everyday or business
language of the end user that captures what the user wants to achieve. A user story is
also a placeholder for conversation between the users and the team. The user stories
should be written by or for the customers for a software project and are their main
instrument to influence the development of the software. User stories could also be
written by developers to express non-functional requirements (security, performance,
quality, etc.)

Velocity
Velocity is a measure of how much the team can complete in an iteration. It is
generally measured in terms of number of user story points completed in a sprint

Iteration
A period (generally 1 - 4 weeks long) when the agile development team produces
the next increment of the software (or any other product) is called an iteration.
The requirements/tasks to be done in the iteration are defined at the beginning of
iteration by the product owner and agreed upon by the team. Once the iteration is
ongoing, the team is not supposed to respond to any new requirement or change
requests.

Scrum
Scrum is the most widely used agile framework. It is comprised of short
iterations, called sprints. It is within these sprints that the actual work is done.
Scrum is comprised of 3 roles - product owner, scrum master and scrum team
and 3 main artefacts - burndown chart, product backlog and sprint backlog. It
also involves 4 important activities - daily standup meeting, sprint planning
meeting, sprint review meeting and the retrospective meeting. With the exception
of daily standup meeting (done everyday during the sprint) the other three are
done once every sprint.
Sometimes the term scrum is used interchangeably with Agile, but this is not
correct, Agile has a broader meaning, it involves a set of values and practices
and Scrum is a specific framework that fits in under the Agile umbrella. Scrum is
the most widely recognized Agile framework, and is compatible with other Agile
practices

Scrum master
A scrum master is one the most important role (along with product owner) in a
scrum based approach. Scrum master is responsible for daily standup meetings
and tracking the overall progress. It is the duty of scrum master to make sure
team is not blocked at any point of time due to external or internal issues. But,
scrum master should not be thought as a task master - since in a pure agile
approach the team assigns tasks to itself.
Sprint
Sprint is the scrum term for an iteration. As defined above, an iteration is a period
when the development team works to produce the next increment of the finished
product.

Burndown chart
This is a graphical representation of the work remaining to be done versus the
time available. This can be a great motivator if the team makes steady progress
and hence it should be shown prominently in the project management tool.

Backlog
A backlog is a collection of user stories and tasks that the team needs to work
upon in future. The future may sometimes even mean the current sprint or
upcoming sprints. Backlog can be classified as product backlog and sprint
backlog. Product backlogs are related to the tasks to be done for the overall
product while sprint backlogs are the ones that need to be completed in the
current sprint.

WHAT ARE IMPEDIMENTS?

Blockers (for a user story)

People issues
We (anyone on the Team) is not skilled or knowledgeable enough
Technical issues
Lack of knowledge
Less than perfect skill (in one area)
Operational issues
Managerial Issues
Organizational issues
Process issues
Outside disruptions (outside means from outside the Team)
External things (weather, riots, war, etc)
Problems that the Pigs have at home (eg, lack of babysitter)
Lack of positive things (eg, the Team needs its own Coke machine or ping pong
table)
Business or customer issues
Culture and waterfall attitudes
Impediments to faster Scrum/Agile adoption