Comments on: Features/Epics vs. user stories in Scrum

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:44:00 +0000

Well defined! User Story is a starting point.

By: Shehan

Shehan — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:09:27 +0000

Thanks for this – this is exactly what I thought it was though there seemed so many articles which even said that a feature is a part of a user story. There are agile fundamentalists who do this as well. This is simple and is what I plan on sticking to.
I also agree with Leeann that a user story has to be fully testable. Hence an epic – features – user stories – tasks. Bamny dont go down to the task level and thats fine. Also a feature can very well be a user story. But at the end of a sprint there must be a deliverable that has been fully tested.

By: Smita

Smita — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:46:13 +0000

Thanks, This helped me in designing my test architecture.Very well explained

By: admin

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 05:09:23 +0000

You are right Leeann!
What I was trying to emphasize in this blog post, was the feature/epic feature level. We tend to keep the user stories at a too high level, resulting in trouble later when trying to fit them into a single sprint!

The user story should always be testable at the end of a sprint, but it’s the level of the test that I wanted to show. We need to be able to test them, but the test it selves is not necessarily a test that makes much sense standalone. Yes I know this is a somewhat contradiction to Scrum, but this is a pragmatic approach which has shown good results for years in my projects.

Cheers!

By: Leeann

Leeann — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:07:58 +0000

If, as you say, a user story is not necessarily fully testable by the end user, does that not contradict the goal of agile development, in which each sprint delivers a fully testable piece of software?

We’re running into some of the same questions you have the top of your post, and our thinking is that a feature can span multiple sprints, yes – but that if it does, it should be considered an “epic” feature, and be broken down into smaller features/user stories, each of which is able to be completed within one sprint, and each of which is deliverable and testable.

If your user story is not testable because it depends on other pieces – it seems like that is a scheduling issue?

By: Salvi Pascual

Salvi Pascual — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:15:07 +0000

Pretty interesting, I was looking for an explanation like this for days! Very useful. Thank you

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:47:13 +0000

Thanks Paul

I’ll keep those differences in mind