Decomposing Epics Into Appropriately Sized User Stories

Developing complex software products often requires tackling expansive features that aim to solve multifaceted user needs. These broad product requirements, commonly referred to as epics in agile methodologies, define substantial functionality that provides overarching business value. However, attempting to deliver extensive epics in a single bound proves problematic. Epics struggle to meet principles of agile development and often crumble under their own weight.

Rather than wrestling a behemoth feature into submission, product teams gain more success by slicing epics into right-sized user stories. Thoughtfully decomposing epics enables easier understanding, planning, and execution compared to wrestling with complex and often poorly defined large efforts. Teams can adopt proven techniques to split swollen epics into well-scoped and interlinked user stories that focus on delivering excellent user experiences.

Why Monolithic Epics Fail

Epics falter for several reasons related to poor coherence, unrealistic expectations, and attempts to boil the ocean. Vague boundaries or objectives plague epics, causing confusion about what gets built. Even with clear goals, massive effort requires extreme accuracy in scoping and estimation — near impossible feats. And finally, lengthy timelines increase risk and reduce opportunities for feedback and learning.

Lack Focus and Definition

By their very nature, epics paint broad brushstrokes of overall goals rather than details of desired functionality. They represent large areas to explore rather than well-defined destinations. Without specificity, epics remain murky to product teams unsure of how to approach the work. The ambiguity causes disagreement about priorities and direction. Progress stalls while folks argue instead of align forward.

Depend on Flawless Execution

Epics often assume perfect assessment and delivery of enormous batches of work. They require precisely scoping every aspect upfront and accurately estimating effort down to the hour. However, virtually no project achieves that high degree of clairvoyance. Unforeseen complexities inevitably emerge. Unexpected obstacles crop up. Product teams rarely predict epic endeavors with enough accuracy to develop credible plans and meet original timeframes.

Increase Risk Without Value Return

Lengthy timelines limit opportunities to demonstrate progress and confirm value. After enough calendar pages flip with no user feedback, uncertainty creeps in casting doubt. The longer the epic timeline, the higher chance of deviating from what users want. Plus, few organizations have patience to wait extended periods without realization of benefit. Epics must balance value delivery against long-term vision to secure ongoing investment.

Principles of Effective Story Splitting

Transitioning from unstable epics to sturdy user stories relies on adhering to core principles that emphasize quality communication, iterative delivery, and reliable estimation.

Maintaining Coherence and Focus

Well-written user stories stand independently while connecting to a broader vision. Each story focuses effort around specific goals without losing sight of the big picture. Maintaining context improves coherence and alignment. Teams understand how their work fits together to drive toward larger objectives defined by the original epic.

Enabling Iterative Development

Properly decomposed stories allow for iterative development by focusing effort into digestible batches. Smaller scoped work packages provide flexibility to pivot if needed. Rapid iterations speed up feedback loops to course correct early when deviations occur. Adjustments cost less and cause less disruption when made incrementally vs waiting until the end.

Sizing for Team Capacity

Right-sized stories match the amount of work a team can complete within a single iteration. Scoping stories to team capacity lessens pressure from unreasonable timelines that assume best case scenarios. It also avoids underutilizing resources when stories prove too small for an iteration. Understanding average throughput helps size stories for improved planning and predictability.

Strategies for Splitting Epics

Several proven options exist for dividing swollen epics into well-formed user stories that teams can readily implement. Each approach has pros and cons to consider when selecting best fit for a given situation.

Splitting by Functionality

Decomposing by functionality involves separating effort by capabilities supporting an epic goal. For example, delivering personalized account recommendations might entail functionality for collecting data, analyzing patterns, matching preferences, saving recommendations, and displaying results. Each module focuses on a single aspect while contributing to the overall outcome.

Pros: Logical separation of capabilities, improved modularity and reuse

Cons: Can lose sight of end-to-end perspective, creates integration complexity

Splitting by Component

Sometimes splitting by technical components makes sense, especially on complex backend systems. Breaking effort across logical technology domains or services layers limits scope while containing complexity. For example, adding voice command functionality could separate into components for speech recognition, natural language processing, device integration, business logic, and data storage/retrieval.

Pros: Limits technical span for developers, contains complexity

Cons: Lacks end-to-end perspective, integration overhead

Splitting by Workflow

Splitting by workflows focuses on major steps required to complete a user goal. User testing functionality could divide into workflow steps such as creating test cases, recruiting test participants, conducting test sessions, recording results, analyzing findings, and sharing reports. Each phase of the end-to-end process scopes to incremental improvement.

Pros: Natural way to break down user goals, simplified validation

Cons: Dependencies across workflow steps

Refining and Linking Split Stories

The process of dividing epics produces an initial guess for work breakdown structures. The first pass at splitting requiring ongoing refinement as understanding improves. Refactoring the backlog becomes an important ritual to clean up stories.

Incorporate Learning to Improve Granularity

Early story decomposition relies on assumptions before digging into details. As teams start work, they gain insights that inform backlog refinement. Stories getting implemented may need re-splitting if overly broad. Others might merge together upon realizing duplication.

Manage Dependencies Between Stories

proper splitting identifies dependencies between stories to inform sequencing. Blockers get called out along with prerequisites. Tracking story relationships highlights risks, bottlenecks, and priority inversion. Careful backlog management reduces surprises from unexpected blockages.

Link Related Stories into Thematic Slices

Smaller stories should connect into thematic slices that link incrementally improving functionality focused on a shared goal. For example, the epic of add personalized product recommendations could have front end, analytics, and data storage slices. The slices group stories improving a single aspect.

Tracking Progress of Split Stories

With dozens of splintered stories stemming from a former epic, tracking status becomes increasingly important. Using various agile project management techniques helps gauge progress towards envisioned capabilities described by the original epic.

Map Stories to Features Within Epics

Stories get categorized by the broader epic feature or capability they help enable. This grouping provides a roll up mechanism to assess coverage of high-level goals represented in the epic. Seeing where story work concentrates or lacks guides ongoing decomposition.

Incorporate Epic Metrics in Story Acceptance

Well-crafted epics likely quantified objectives that business hopes to achieve. Including those target metrics directly in story acceptance criteria keeps those desired outcomes omni present. Teams see how their effort ladders up to corporate KPIs.

Prioritize Roadmap Around Epic Milestones

Roadmap prioritization considers milestones working toward epic goals in addition to standalone story value. Key dependency stories or enabling functions receive heightened urgency if they unblock other efforts. Progress begins fanning out across epic objectives.

Example Story Hierarchy for Ecommerce Site

Decomposing efforts for an example ecommerce website helps solidify concepts. The epic to create personalized shopping experiences aims to improve sales and satisfaction. That gets split into Stories to capture user data, analyze behavior, match products, save details, and display recommendations.

Epic: Personalized Shopping Experiences

Goal: Increase user engagement and sales via tailored product recommendations

Story: Capture User Behavior

Description: Record user sessions and interactions to gather data for analysis and recommendations

Story: Analyze Patterns

Description: Extract meaningful user preferences and trends from behavior data

Story: Match Products

Description: Identify products aligned to extracted user preferences for recommendation

Story: Save Recommendations

Description: Persist matched products for easy retrieval to personalized interfaces

Story: Display Recommendations

Description: Show tailored products in shopping interfaces to influence purchase