# Agile, Scrum and Kanban — Sprints, User Stories and Story Points

Source: https://skills101.in/learn/software-engineering/agile-scrum-kanban — Skills101 free tutorial (Software Engineering). Updated 2026-11-09.

Almost every company you'll join works in **Agile**, usually **Scrum**. Interviewers expect freshers to know the words: sprint, stand-up, backlog, story points.

## 1. The Agile Manifesto (2001)

Four values — the left side is valued **more** than the right:

1. **Individuals and interactions** over processes and tools
2. **Working software** over comprehensive documentation
3. **Customer collaboration** over contract negotiation
4. **Responding to change** over following a plan

Key principles: deliver working software frequently (weeks, not months), welcome changing requirements, business people and developers work together daily, and measure progress by working software.

## 2. Scrum

![Scrum: product backlog is planned into a sprint backlog, the 1 to 4 week sprint has a daily stand-up, produces a working increment, then a sprint review and retrospective lead into the next sprint](https://skills101.in/learn-img/software-engineering/scrum.svg)

### Roles (3)

| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| **Product Owner** | owns the product backlog, decides priority, represents the customer |
| **Scrum Master** | coaches the team in Scrum, removes blockers — not a "boss" |
| **Developers** | the cross-functional team that builds the increment (devs, testers, designers) |

### Events (5)

| Event | When / how long | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| **Sprint** | fixed 1–4 weeks | the container for all work |
| **Sprint planning** | start of sprint | pick backlog items, make a plan |
| **Daily stand-up (daily scrum)** | 15 min every day | what I did, what I'll do, any blockers |
| **Sprint review** | end of sprint | demo the increment to stakeholders |
| **Sprint retrospective** | after review | how can the team work better? |

### Artifacts (3)

- **Product backlog** — ordered list of everything the product might need.
- **Sprint backlog** — items chosen for this sprint plus the plan.
- **Increment** — working, tested software that meets the **Definition of Done**.

## 3. User stories

> As a **student**, I want to **see my attendance percentage**, so that **I know if I can sit the exam**.

Acceptance criteria (how we know it's done):

- Shows percentage per subject, rounded to one decimal.
- Shows a red warning below 75%.

Good stories follow **INVEST**: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable. Big stories are called **epics** and are split into smaller stories.

## 4. Story points and velocity

Teams estimate **relative effort** in story points (often Fibonacci: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) instead of hours, often by **planning poker**.

**Velocity** = story points completed per sprint. If the last three sprints completed 20, 24 and 22 points, the average velocity is 22. A backlog of 110 points then needs about 110 ÷ 22 = **5 sprints**.

A **burndown chart** plots remaining work against days in the sprint; it should slope down to zero.

## 5. Kanban

A board with columns like **To do → In progress → Review → Done**. No fixed sprints; work flows continuously. The key rule is a **WIP (work-in-progress) limit** — e.g. at most 3 cards in "In progress" — to stop multitasking and expose bottlenecks. Popular for support and operations teams.

## 6. Where DevOps fits

**DevOps** joins development and operations: automated builds, tests and deployments (**CI/CD**), infrastructure as code and monitoring. Agile makes you deliver often; DevOps makes delivering often **safe and automatic**.

## Common mistakes

- Calling the Scrum Master the team's manager.
- Changing sprint length every sprint (it should be fixed).
- Treating story points as hours.

## Quick recap

- Agile values working software, collaboration and responding to change.
- Scrum: 3 roles (PO, SM, developers), 5 events, 3 artifacts.
- User story: As a … I want … so that …, with acceptance criteria.
- Velocity = points per sprint; Kanban limits work in progress.


Practice quiz and free certificate: https://skills101.in/learn/software-engineering/agile-scrum-kanban