When working in an agile-ish software development team you will come to the part where, as a team, you will need to prioritize and decide how to split the user stories for your current Sprint. For these purpose there are widely accepted steps to take, that act as a checklist that will add up in quality and will favor clarity and visibility for the whole company; product, engineering, business teams.
These criteria for evaluating User Stories is summed up into two acronyms, INVEST and SMART.
Additionally the following suggestions can be considered as guidelines to split user stories :
- Functional size: Amount of work required to complete the story. This can be measured in terms of the number of features or tasks that need to be completed.
- Business value: Value that it provides to the end user or customer. This can be measured in terms of the benefit that the user will receive from the completed story.
- Risk: Likelihood that the story will not be completed as planned. This can be measured in terms of the uncertainty or complexity of the work involved.
- Dependencies: Tasks or features that must be completed before the story can be started. These dependencies can be internal to the team or external to the team.
- Time constraints: Deadlines or due dates that must be met in order to complete the story. These constraints can be imposed by the team or by external factors such as customer deadlines.
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