Team Writing Own Sprint Stories: Close Calls

I started an initiative in 2021 was to have the team start writing their own sprint stories - the series starts here

I started this initiative to solve specific problem: me not knowing the system well enough to write specific stories for the team to execute.

The two close calls I had when specifying stories were exactly on the system I built from the beginning. I specified almost every aspect of what the system used, processes involved, and expected results.

I wanted clean up technical debt and wrote stories for them.

Just add this, remove the debt.

Done and done.

The team signed off on those stories as well. Yeah, they make sense. Nothing wrong with the approach. One person - 1-2 points of effort.

Three days after, these stories were still not done. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!

My mental understanding of the system diverged from the reality of the system and that gap in understanding created a story that may be 8 points of effort.

Woah.

At the time, I wrote stories that only specified the end result and not how to achieve the result. 😅

It’s that moment I learned: I don’t know the system anymore and stories I write can be harder to implement than the team expects.

Next, I talk about the coding parallel of writing stories.