Focus on stories, not the tasks. It’s far better to finish 80% of your stories than to make every story 80% complete. Completed stories give usable feedback, expose assumptions, and reduce risk. Value comes from done stories, not a subset of tasks.
Sometimes we can’t move forward with stories because it’s unclear whether our proposed approach will work. It’s time for a discovery spike! When we do a spike, we’re not aiming to have usable code or artifacts as a result of it. We’re merely doing the least amount of research and discover to be able to decide a general course of action. We might install some software, or write some code, to prove to us that it’s going to work. And then we might throw that code away. And when we work on the actual story, we product production quality code and artifacts. ...
It’s very important to store the stories in a way that they can very easily be merged and split. It’s common for teams to record too much information in their stories. To the point that it becomes very tedious and overly complicated to attempt to merge or split a story. And so it’s rarely suggested by the team, even though it’s the right thing to do. Merging is pretty straightforward to do. And splitting stories is more of a craft, because each story still needs to aim towards following INVEST. (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small, and Testable.) ...
Sometimes we just need a quick estimation on something, without asking everyone to use their laptops to login to a website, or passing out estimation cards to everyone. For this, we can use the simple “flying fingers” technique. We read the story, discuss it briefly, then each builder hides one hand with their estimation done in “number of fingers” to represent the size. Someone counts down 3, 2, 1, “Go”, and everyone reveals at once. ...
User stories are reminders of features, not full specifications. Avoid recording every detail up front because details change. We’ll capture the details later, when they matter. When a story reads like a contract, it stops being a conversation. When it reads like a reminder, it invites one. Follow the acronym “INVEST” as a quick check. I.NDEPENDENT N.EGOTIABLE V.ALUABLE E.STIMATABLE S.MALL T.ESTABLE TESTABLE Each story needs to be able to have one or more tests that can prove that the story is done. ...