User Stories: Split or not to Split
It is often a good practise splitting User Stories but to what extend ? I come across many times with Scrum Teams splitting stories so to fit into their Sprints. This practise makes sense at first look as smaller stories allow teams to test their work early and get feedback from their stakeholders. If this is the case, and those stories are potentially releasable or help us to test some of our assumptions that is a great step in Agility.
However, this practise has a dark side and can turn into work over-dragging from Sprint to Sprint with no real value delivered. Teams get into a delusion that they are doing an iterative incremental delivery however the reality is they are just doing an iterative development with no real increment or delivery.
So what can teams do not to have such a blind spot ? By just looking at their velocity, they can easily get into such trap. Teams can use other metrics such as release frequency, value metrics, Lead time and throughput metrics for deliverables. And of course every retrospective is a great opportunity to discuss the value of the increment. Remember, not released increment rarely creates value and most of the time lacks real feedback.
Alper Gürbüz
