Yesterday, I read an article by the same title written by Gojko Azdic (Linkedin). The original article can be found here https://goo.gl/N52xbs.
You may proceed to read the complete article or try my abbreviated version below.
The next time you need to break down product backlog ideas, make them TOO BIG first. Make sure you capture Testable Outputs and Outcomes, Behavioural Impacts and a Goal. With those aspects in place, story splitting takes a completely different direction.
TOO BIG – Elevator Pitch
To slice stories, don’t break down the solution, but try to solve a smaller problem. To facilitate a good discussion on discovering a smaller problem, identify these aspects of the story:
- Testable Outputs tell us how to measure if the story was done well.
- Testable Outcomes tell us how we’ll measure whether the story was a good idea from a business perspective.
- Behaviour Impacts tell us how to measure if the story was actually useful to our users.
- Goal statements tell us if this initiative is aligned with the vision of the organisation.
Knowing the expectations for each of these aspects is crucial to understanding the problem at hand, and then breaking it down into smaller problems that guide us towards the big vision.