Importance of Effective Splitting

In Agile, the product backlog serves as a central repository for all product-related information, including requirements, estimations, and communication. This backlog is organized into four hierarchical layers: theme, epic, user story, and task, which clarify its structure and purpose.

• Theme: Represents a long-term product strategy over several months to years. It guides the overall objective and is subdivided into actionable epics and user stories. Themes typically aren’t estimated due to their extensive time frame.
• Epic: A significant value that requires substantial investment and spans multiple sprints. It is aligned with the product strategy and can be divided into various user stories, where splitting techniques can be applied.
• User Story: The fundamental unit of value in Agile, delivered during each sprint. A key Agile practice is to ensure that a user story is small enough to be completed within a sprint, signifying consistent and incremental delivery to customers. If a user story exceeds a sprint's timeframe, it must be broken down further.
• Task: A detailed breakdown of a user story that can be completed within a few days. Typically technical in nature, tasks are managed by developers while being recognized by the product owner.

Reason 1: Iterative Delivery

As previously mentioned, the core tenet of Agile is the iterative, continuous, and incremental delivery of user stories, marking a stark contrast to waterfall management. Agile practitioners understood that a major issue in software development was the creation of unwanted products. Many waterfall projects, after substantial investment of time and resources, discovered that their outputs did not meet customer needs.

Eric Ries emphasizes that “the biggest risk in business is creating services or products that nobody uses.” To mitigate this risk, Agile employs iterative, small-scale delivery within short timeframes.

Reason 2: Estimation Accuracy

The second benefit of effective user story splitting is enhanced estimation accuracy. Generally, the smaller the task, the easier and more precise the estimation. For example, estimating what you will do next year is significantly more challenging than estimating the following day.

Reason 3: Ensuring Quality

The third reason pertains to improving quality. According to the study of programming complexity, as the number of entities within a system grows, the interactions between them increase exponentially, complicating comprehension and management. Consequently, larger tasks become more complex, making it challenging to maintain quality.

1. Vertical Splitting

The first technique is vertical splitting. In software development, tasks can be split horizontally or vertically. Horizontal splitting divides tasks by technical layers (e.g., back-end, front-end, database) and assigns them accordingly. This approach often results in handoffs between teams, leading to increased errors and communication costs.

In contrast, vertical splitting spans across layers, allowing a single developer to manage a task independently, resulting in better performance and quality.

2. Splitting Based on Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance Criteria are crucial in Agile for articulating detailed requirements that must be fulfilled before a user story can be considered complete. Clear Acceptance Criteria facilitate effective user story splitting.

3. MoSCoW Method for Prioritization

The MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have), created by Dai Clegg, serves as a prioritization tool for requirements in rapid application development. It categorizes requirements into four groups, aiding in user story splitting alongside Acceptance Criteria.

• Must have: Essential requirements that must be implemented for functionality.
• Should have: Important but not critical requirements that enhance customer satisfaction.
• Could have: Non-essential requirements that improve user experience if time and resources allow.
• Won’t have: Requirements that are unnecessary at present and can be postponed.

MoSCoW is valuable for user story splitting, allowing non-critical items to be addressed later.

4. INVEST Framework

The INVEST framework provides guidelines to ensure high-quality user stories. The acronym stands for Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. After applying prior splitting techniques, it’s essential to assess whether the resulting user stories meet these quality standards.

• Independent: User stories should be manageable and developable without dependencies.
• Negotiable: They should allow for discussions regarding requirements and estimations.
• Valuable: Each story must deliver value to end-users, reducing the risk of developing unwanted products.
• Estimable: User stories should be clear enough to facilitate planning and outcome prediction.
• Small: They should be small enough to be completed within a sprint to mitigate complexity.
• Testable: Must be verifiable through Acceptance Criteria.

While meeting all criteria may not always be feasible, striving for them enhances effectiveness.

5. Three Amigos Technique

The Three Amigos technique reviews user stories from three perspectives: business, technology, and testing. This process involves the product owner evaluating the story's value, a developer assessing technical feasibility, and a tester ensuring quality to prevent bugs.

Despite being underestimated due to perceived time and resource costs, studies show that addressing bugs early in development is significantly less expensive than rectifying them after release.

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