Project Management Glossary

An ordered list of everything a team might work on — features, bugs, improvements, and ideas — that hasn't been started yet. Items are pulled from the top of the backlog when there's capacity, so the order encodes priority.

A line chart that tracks remaining work against time over a sprint. The line 'burns down' toward zero as tasks are completed, giving an at-a-glance read on whether a team is on pace to finish.

The elapsed time it takes a single task to move from 'started' to 'done.' It measures how long active work actually takes, and is the most useful flow metric for teams that ship continuously.

A short, recurring team sync — traditionally 15 minutes, held standing up — where each member shares what they did, what they're doing next, and what's blocking them. Core to scrum, optional everywhere else.

The date by which a task is meant to be completed. Due dates create accountability and let a tool surface what's overdue or coming up, but over-using them turns a board into a wall of false deadlines.

A large body of work that's too big to finish in one task or sprint, broken down into smaller related tasks. An epic groups those tasks under a shared goal, like 'Build user authentication.'

A technique for ordering items in a list (or cards on a kanban board) by giving each item a fractional position value, so inserting between two existing items doesn't require renumbering anything else.

A workflow method that visualizes tasks as cards on a board, where cards move left-to-right through columns representing stages of work. Originated at Toyota in the 1940s; adapted to software in the 2000s.

A visual workspace divided into columns where each column represents a stage of work, and tasks are represented as cards that move through the columns from left to right as they progress.

A simple ranking that labels each task by how urgently it matters, commonly P1 (critical) through P4 (low). Priority levels tell you what to do next when everything feels important — without spreadsheets or scoring.

A fixed-length time-boxed iteration (commonly 1–4 weeks) during which a software team commits to completing a specific set of tasks. Core to the scrum framework.

A unit of relative estimation used in agile teams to express how much effort a task will take, without committing to hours. Points capture complexity and uncertainty rather than wall-clock time.

A smaller, checklist-style item nested under a parent task. Subtasks break a single task into concrete steps without cluttering the board, and the parent isn't done until its subtasks are.

The amount of work a team completes in a single sprint, usually measured in story points. Averaged over several sprints, velocity is used to forecast how much a team can realistically take on next.

Tasks that have been started but not yet finished. In kanban, WIP limits cap how many tasks can be active at once to prevent context-switching and force teams to finish work before starting more.