Intervals

There are four primary intervals (also called a work type) in the Agile process:

Interval Description
Products

Products contain one or more releases, into which any high priority and high business value work item can be moved. A product roadmap is used to outline what will be done over the next 2-4 releases and it helps drive all work item movement into a release backlog.

Releases

Releases contain one or more sprints. As each upcoming sprint is planned for, well-written stories will be moved into the sprint backlog. As each sprint is completed, a review meeting is held where the successes and failures of the current sprint are openly discussed among team members and the new and/or improved features are demonstrated to the team and other product stakeholders. After all sprints in a release are completed, actual progress is compared to expected progress (as outlined in the product roadmap).

Sprints

A sprint is where all of the actual work happens. Every day, team members gather in daily standup and quickly state what they have done, what they are going to do, and whether they have any impediments. Sprints rely on a team's velocity to determine how much work can be done in a future sprint and on a team's burndown chart to gauge how well a team is completing its work in a current sprint.

Teams

Teams contain all of the individual team members who belong to a single Scrum team.

In the Agile process, in addition to a primary work type, there are also teams. At minimum, every organization has at least one team and every team has its own sprint (in which progress against any work item is tracked). Some Agile organizations prefer to map multiple teams to a single release, which means that each team would have its own series of sprints in which progress against any work item that is tracked.

For more information, see the following topics: