The Art of Splitting Stories: Breaking Down Features for Continuous Progress

Stories are the foundation of good software development. The quality of stories can have a profound effect on a team's progress, so much so that it might be one of the biggest factors in determining a project's success.

Great products are built by iterating quickly and adapting the initial vision based on real user feedback. The faster we can get an initial version into users' hands, the sooner we gain valuable insights on how to further improve the product.

Well-defined, smaller stories not only make it easier to deliver value incrementally, but they also empower product owners (POs) to prioritize more effectively. What might initially seem like a "nice-to-have" could turn out to be mission-critical. Conversely, something we thought was essential might be worked around without significantly affecting the workflow. The priority should always be getting a working version out to users quickly to validate assumptions and adjust accordingly.

Here’s how mastering the art of splitting stories can increase both speed and quality in your development process.

Always Show Progress: Tiny Steps for Big Results

A common mistake I've seen is that product owners (POs) try to describe an entire feature within a single user story. Even a seemingly small remark buried in an otherwise simple sentence can lead to significantly more work than anticipated. Big stories can slow down progress, prevent parallelization of work and make it more challenging to focus on important tasks. The key to preventing this is by ensuring stories are small and testable.

One of the most important shifts in mindset when splitting stories is understanding that a story is not a finished feature.

Start talking about ways to demo the story to non-technical stakeholders (for example, during a sprint review). Use these “step by step”-instructions to infer test cases (manual or automated). Each test case or even a single assertion, is something that could potentially be sliced into its own story. Let’s call these assertions checkpoints. A well-written story describes exactly one such 'checkpoint'. A feature might consist of many such checkpoints, each being a verifiable assertion in the overall journey of building a feature.

Using epics to group related stories is an effective way to organize these checkpoints into full features. Each story within an epic should focus on delivering a single aspect of functionality, providing a clear and measurable way to demonstrate progress.

For example, if you’re working on a user login feature, each of these lines could represent a separate checkpoint:

• To prove I am allowed to use the app, I want to enter 'username' and 'password' to log in. Workflow requirement
• Admins should be able add new users by entering their email-address. Workflow requirement
• Only work email-addresses should be used to add new users as these allow the users to be clearly identified Security requirement
• Once I’m logged in, the app should remember me for the rest of the day so I don't need to log in every time I open / reload the page Usability requirement
• I want to log in using an existing account, like Google or Facebook. Usability requirement
• I want to be able to change my password in the future if i suspect it to not be save any more Security requirement
• I don’t want my password to be stolen in case of a hack, so the password should never be stored anywhere in plain text. Security requirement

Each of these checkpoints is independently testable and verifiable, making it easy for the team to continuously show progress without stepping on each other's feet. Splitting stories this way gives both the development team and the PO a clearer picture of progress, as well as more frequent opportunities to validate and adjust the course of development.

Bonus-tip: Don’t shy away from showing REST APIs. For instance, if a user story involves fetching data from a service, simply showing a page with a structured JSON dump from a REST API can be a valid checkpoint. It’s both verifiable and understandable, even to non-technical stakeholders.
However, avoid showing raw DEBUG logs as these can be overwhelming and difficult to interpret and in contrast to a formally agreed on API are subject to frequent change.

In summary, by focusing on demo-able checkpoints, slicing stories into testable assertions, and making progress visible through simple, verifiable steps, you can ensure that development is moving forward in small, steady increments.

Separate the Necessary from the Nice-to-Have

Great products are built by iterating quickly and adapting the initial vision based on real user feedback. The faster we can get an initial version into users' hands, the sooner we gain valuable insights on how to further improve the product. What might initially seem like a "nice-to-have" could turn out to be mission-critical. Conversely, something which was regarded as essential might be worked around without significantly affecting the workflow. The goal is to prioritize getting a working version out to users quickly to validate assumptions and adjust accordingly. The faster we can repeat this build-measure-adjust loop before running out of budget, the better the changes to produce something really remarkable.

User stories provide value in different ways, each catering to a different aspect of the product:

• Workflow: These stories describe functionality that is essential for performing a process or workflow. For example, “A customer should be able to add products to a shopping cart for later purchase.”
• Usability: These stories focus on improving the user experience. For instance, “A customer's payment information should be stored so they don’t need to re-enter it for each purchase.” While not being essential for getting the job done, they improve the likeability of the app and can be a differentiating feature.
• Design: These stories focus on the presentation and look-and-feel of the product. Design stories are often easier to convey through images or mock-ups. For example, “Product cards should be visually appealing and consistently present products in a desirable way.” Great design is crucial and its importance should not be downplayed. However it is important to avoid polishing too early as it makes it harder to accept future change requests.
• Legislation: Stories that are driven by legal or regulatory requirements. For instance, “Personal data must be deletable on request.” or “All purchases shall be correctly taxed”.
• Security: These stories focus on protecting the user and the system. For example, “Ensure that no one else can impersonate me and make purchases under my name.”
• Technical: These stories target performance, scalability, interoperability and much more. For example, “The shopping app should scale up during peak periods to handle 100.000 concurrent users.” Important note is not to overprovision here. Of course situations where certain actions can not be handled are undesirable. However getting 95% the way for a fraction of the costs may still be worthwhile.

It's important to avoid mixing different aspects within the same story. Each story represents a single assertion, a single aspect to verify. Whether it’s focused on workflow, usability, design, or security, each story addresses a specific goal that needs to be independently verified. Mixing different concerns within one story means not only that you lose a lot of control but are usually a big factor in software-development-costs spiraling out of control, deadlines are not met and quality takes big hits.

By keeping stories focused on a single aspect and separating the necessary from the nice-to-have, you allow for quicker iterations and a more adaptable development process, giving the product owner the flexibility to prioritize and the team the ability to stay agile.

Don’t Get Caught Up in Design-Details Too Early

One common pitfall is trying to force a story to be implemented in a single, overly specific way. This can limit flexibility and stifle creativity. Instead, keep the requirements open-ended and trust the development team to implement them in a sensible, practical way. By allowing some leeway in how a story is executed, you give the team the opportunity to experiment and find the most efficient solutions.

Let designers make informed decisions by showing them an initial working implementation. Once they can see realistic data in the context of the actual product, they’ll gain a better understanding of data dependencies, workflows, and how design can be improved. This approach helps designers make smarter choices based on the product’s true needs rather than theoretical ideas and assumptions.

Remember, the goal is not to achieve the "final" design in one go. Great designs are often the result of iteration, learning, and rework. By embracing a faster, more iterative process, you avoid falling into the trap of analysis paralysis, where too much time is spent trying to perfect things upfront. Get a working version first, and then iterate on the design quickly and continuously based on feedback.

To make this process smoother, encourage frequent syncs between developers, designers, and product owners. Don’t wait two weeks for the next iteration—constant communication and short feedback loops allow for faster adjustments and better results.

Design is an integral part of product development, but it shouldn't become a bottleneck that prevents forward progress. Instead of trying to perfect design upfront, embrace an iterative approach where design evolves alongside functionality.
Remember: Working is better than perfect. A functional feature that delivers value can always be refined, but a perfectly designed feature that hasn't been built helps no one.

Simplified Estimation: The Power of Small Stories

When stories are split into small, focused checkpoints, estimation becomes dramatically simpler. This approach challenges traditional story point estimation and offers several key advantages.

One Story, One Point

Once your stories are small enough and similarly sized, you can adopt a simplified estimation approach: every story gets one point. This might seem radical at first, but consider the benefits:

• Clear Progress Tracking: Instead of debating story points, simply count completed stories
• Easy Sprint Planning: Calculate velocity by the number of stories completed Reduced Estimation Overhead: No more lengthy estimation sessions
• Objective Measurement: "4 out of 10 stories completed" is more concrete than "13 out of 20 points done"

Simplified Sprint Management

With one-point stories, sprint management becomes more straightforward:

• Remaining Work: Just count the incomplete stories
• Sprint Burndown: A simple story count creates clear burndown charts
• Mid-Sprint status updates: Quick glance at stories done vs. remaining
• Velocity Calculation: Average number of stories completed per sprint

Enhanced Visibility of Progress

Each completed story represents a concrete, demonstrable improvement to the system:

• Every story adds a verifiable capability
• Progress is visible through working software
• Stakeholders can see evolution story by story
• Each completed story marks a clear step forward

Improved Prioritization

Small, single-point stories enable better prioritization:

• Reduced Dependencies: Less overlap between stories means fewer blocking issues Flexible Scheduling: Stories can be easily reordered as priorities shift
• Clear Trade-offs: Easier to compare value between similar-sized items
• Quick Wins: Ability to deliver high-value items early

Making the Transition

To move to this approach:
1) Focus on splitting stories until they're similarly sized
2) Start with a trial sprint using one-point estimation
3) Track both traditional and simplified metrics initially
4) Adjust sprint capacity based on number of stories rather than points

Remember: The goal isn't to make every story exactly the same size, but to make them small enough that size variations become insignificant to the overall progress tracking.