No, I’m not talking about the Manhattan Project or some comic book superhero. Just the agile distillation of requirements, use cases. scenarios, specifications, and product owner whims into indivisible user stories.
In a world of complex and changing markets, it is easy to drift into the “Project Death by Requirements” trap. I believe this approach to user stories is in the true spirit of the original XP ‘INVEST’ment: Remember? Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable
What makes up an ‘Atomic’ Story?
A. Five or fewer criteria.
B. Concise, focused, single topic description. Hint: can be described in 250 words or less, including acceptance criteria
C. Addresses only one idea or activity. Hint: doesn’t use the word: ‘and’ or worse: ‘manage’ in the description
D. Can’t be split without building half a feature. Hint: if it constantly refers to another story, perhaps it should be combined with that story.
E. Uses at most a single wireframe representing a single dialog or section of a page
Advantages:
1. Easily compared to other stories of similar size
2. Estimate load and progress based on quantity of story count, not story estimates: Every story is a 1. if one story ends up being harder than another, don’t worry, there will typically be several trivial other ones for balance
3. Easily combine stories into suites or epics to complete a whole and usable feature and in turn combine epics or suites into minimally releable feature sets to get customer feedback early and provide early value to the market, customers, and/or users
4. Features formerly hidden in 13 point stories get revealed because they have their own story
5. Prevents missed requirements: Developer says: “Oh, I didn’t know that functionality was part of this 10 criteria story!”
6. For lean aficionados it minimizes batch size and work in progress allowing for incredible flexibility for enhancing throughput
