3 Things to Know About Smaller User Stories

Yesterday I attended a webinar by Mark Levison (graciously hosted by Donna Reed) about slicing user stories -- why to make them smaller, how to make them smaller, how small to make them, etc. Here are some of the points I took away.

Why Make Stories Smaller?

It's easier to estimate the work involved and easier to grasp the details. Further, when (possibly if, but probably when) you get partway through and start to realize how far off your original estimate was, you haven't spent as much time working on something that your product owner will pull the plug on after discovering how long it will take.

How Do You Make Them Smaller?

Mark had an entire page of possibilities so I won't get into enumerating them, but one of the driving thoughts here in breaking down the story size is that -- once decomposed -- you want to still be tackling a story that adds value to the project. You can find any number of ways to reduce story size, but make sure the resulting stories each add value.

How Small Do You Make Them?

The guideline Mark gives a team just starting off with Agile is to make sure stories are big enough that they take a couple of people a couple of days. If it's smaller than that it's really a task, not a story. (As an aside, he also pointed out that there's nothing carved in stone anywhere that says you have to use tasks when running an Agile project -- maybe that's something to bring up with your team.) So keep the story/task distinction in mind and don't break down anything too much.

My Thoughts

My assessment of Mark's webinar is that he gave a great, in-depth discussion on story size. It was accessible to beginners, but he answered some write-in questions that were more advanced in nature. Mark clearly has real-world experience in this realm and does a good job of clarifying the material. The idea of decomposing stories into reasonable size is applicable for game development, to be sure, so although Mr. Levison's talk was geared toward "standard" project development I'd still recommend this content for developers in the games industry.