To understand scrum, you should know where it comes from. Best and shortest story is the agile manifesto : Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan See also: http://scrumtrainingseries.com Scrum is an implementation of agile, which has: - Product Backlog List of INVEST Product Backlog Items (PBI) written and maintained by Product Owner INVEST: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable PBI should idealy not take more than 2-3 days to develop. Do a Who/What/Why check for every PBI - Backlog grooming -- 1 hour (team + owner + master) prioritize / clarify / split large and estimate (S/M/L/XL) PBIs (next sprints) add / remove / reprioritize the backlog if necessary - Sprint Plannung 1 -- 1 hour (team + owner) go through "READY" and prioritized PBIs (stories) ...