The Sprint Lifecycle: From Backlog to Demo
In Silicon Valley, "Agile" isn't just a methodology; it's the language of the office. Whether you are at a 5-person startup or a 50,000-person giant like Meta, your work will likely be organized into Sprints.
Key Vocabulary
| Term | Definition | Example Sentence | | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | | Sprint | A 1-4 week period of focused work. | "We are in the middle of Sprint 42." | | Backlog | The list of all features and bugs to be fixed. | "Let's add that feature request to the backlog." | | Grooming | Reviewing the backlog to ensure tasks are clear. | "We have a grooming session at 2 PM today." | | Velocity | How much work a team completes in a sprint. | "Our velocity dropped because of the holiday." |
The "Ceremonies" (Meetings)
You will hear these four meeting names constantly:
- Sprint Planning: Deciding what work to pull from the backlog into the next sprint.
- Daily Standup: A 15-minute meeting to sync on progress and "blockers."
- Sprint Demo: Showing the finished work to stakeholders.
- Retrospective (Retro): Discussing what went well and what didn't.
Verbs for the Workflow
When talking about tasks (often called Tickets or Issues), use these verbs:
- To pull: To take a task from the backlog. ("I'll pull that ticket into this sprint.")
- To block: To stop progress because of an external factor. ("I'm blocked by the API documentation.")
- To ship: To finish and release a feature. ("We are on track to ship the new checkout flow on Friday.")
- To punt: To delay a task to a future sprint. ("Let's punt the dark mode feature to next month.")
Alex's Tip: In a standup, keep it short. Use the "Yesterday, Today, Blockers" format. It shows you respect everyone's time-a key value in high-performance tech cultures.
- I have a question about line 42.
- Could you add a test for this case?
- Nice catch on the edge case here.
- Left a few small comments. Otherwise, looks good to me.
LGTM ("Looks Good To Me") is a common abbreviation engineers type to approve a pull request.
Common mistakes
- Mix instead of merge. Say merge the branch, never mix the branch.
- Put up a PR instead of open a PR. The natural verb is open: I opened a PR for the login fix.
- Saying the code is in production when it is only deployed. Deployed means it is on the server; in production or live means users can reach it.
Practice
Match each action to the correct verb (build, merge, deploy, ship):
- Combining your branch into main: _
- Making the feature live for users: _
- Compiling the code into an artifact: _
- Putting the artifact on a server: _
Answers: 1. merge, 2. ship (or release), 3. build, 4. deploy.
You now have the core workflow vocabulary. In the next lesson, you will learn the language of sprints, backlogs, and standups, the rhythm that organizes all of this work.