Epics, User Stories and Tasks

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With another Sprint Planning, the problem returns: how can I help the team organise the work efficiently? Below you can find a quick guide to help create Epics, User Stories and Tasks

Epic

An epic captures a large body of work. It is essentially a large user story that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories. It may take several sprints to complete an epic.

In practice, epics should represent features which will be delivered by an initiative

User Story

A convenient format for expressing the desired business value. Story is a kind of work that directly affects the end-user experience

They can be written at various levels of granularity and should be easy to progressively refine.

How to create?

User Stories employ the model: "As a (persona) I want to (do something) so that I can (make something else possible)."

Ex: "As the birthday guy, I want to invite my friends, so we can enjoy this party together."

Who writes user stories?

Typically initiated by the PO, further refined by the team

When written by others, the PO is still accountable for the story.

Tasks

Tasks are simple imperative statements that declare what must be done, and often form the component parts of user stories.

Think of a task in scrum as a business requirement that’s not user focused and no longer involves the end user.

That’s the distinction: You usually know when you’ve broken down beyond a user story to its smallest pieces when you run out of personas and are left with just business level requirements.