It's sprint planning day. Someone pulls up a ticket called "Implement user authentication" and the room goes quiet.
The story has been sitting in the backlog for three sprints. Nobody wants to estimate it because everyone knows it's going to blow up. The last time you tried to tackle something this size, it turned into a two-week death march that ended with the story getting split mid-sprint anyway.
Large user stories are planning poison. They hide complexity, resist estimation, and turn your sprint board into a graveyard of half-finished work.
The problem with big stories
When a story is too large, a few predictable things happen:
Planning poker turns into guessing. You throw out an 8, someone else says 13, a third person suggests breaking it down. Twenty minutes later, you've compromised on "we'll figure it out" and moved on.
Work bleeds across sprints. The story gets started but not finished. It carries over. Then carries over again. Your velocity charts start looking like modern art.
Hidden complexity surfaces at the worst time. Day three of the sprint, someone discovers an edge case that doubles the scope. Now you're cutting corners or cutting scope, neither of which feels good.
What good splitting looks like
A well-split story should pass a simple test: can a user actually do something with it?
"Create database schema for users" is not a good split. It's a technical task disguised as a story.
"User can register with email" is better. Someone can use it. You can demo it. It delivers actual value.
The trick is finding the right seam to cut along. Sometimes that's workflow steps. Sometimes it's data types. Sometimes it's complexity levels (basic case first, edge cases later).
Splitting strategies that actually work
By workflow: If your story involves multiple steps, each step might be its own story. "User can upload a profile photo" and "User can crop their profile photo" are both independently useful.
By data variation: If your story handles different types of input, split by type. "User can import from CSV" and "User can import from Excel" can ship separately.
By complexity: Start with the happy path. "User can reset password via email" ships first. "User can reset password via SMS" comes later.
By user type: "Admin can view reports" and "Team lead can view reports" might have different requirements worth separating.
The tool I built for this
I got tired of staring at massive stories trying to figure out where to cut them. So I built a Story Splitter that does the thinking for you.
Paste in your oversized story, add some context about your project if you want, and it generates sub-stories with acceptance criteria. Takes about 30 seconds.
It's free. No signup required.
When not to split
Not every story needs splitting. A story that fits comfortably in a sprint with clear acceptance criteria should stay whole. Over-splitting creates its own overhead: more tickets to track, more PRs to review, more standups where someone says "still working on that tiny thing."
The goal is stories your team can estimate with confidence, build within a sprint, and demo to stakeholders. If you're already there, leave it alone.
Smaller stories, better sprints
Better story sizing fixes problems upstream. Estimates get more accurate. Work actually finishes. The board moves in a way that feels real instead of theatrical.
Next time you're staring at a monster ticket nobody wants to touch, try breaking it down first. Your sprint planning sessions will thank you.
Top comments (2)
This is great for beginners. I feel like once you get the hang of it, you just keep the stories short from the start. Great tool though!
This is underrated advice.
Oversized stories hide risk and delay feedback. Smaller slices force clarity.
Do you use any rule of thumb to know when a story is “small enough”?